|
Home / Business / Advertising
“Web Conditioning: Get Your Site in Shape”
By:Joseph Pratt
It’s not talked about much, but woodland animals are notoriously unresponsive to advertising. That’s why you don’t expect to see many billboards when camping. The website of a brick-and-mortar business acts much like a cyber billboard, a vitally important informational hub placed on the Internet with anticipation that visitors will come across the site to explore its content. Yet, many businesses, particularly the small-to-midsized, have their websites built with no thought of its positioning or upkeep; inevitably these websites are parked in the interactive weeds, lost in the woods of a different sort. Too many of these smaller businesses don’t realize the missed opportunities of an improperly aligned website. A representative website isn’t a box to be crossed off a to-do list for a business, but instead an integral component of today’s successful business.
Think of haphazardly positioned websites as being interactive slouches of sorts; they are out of shape web entities sure to be overlooked by search engines. In order to shape up, the sloppy website must shed its baggage and get toned. And like physical fitness there is no finish line, just positive results from proper maintenance. While no one will confuse ICMediaDirect.com with Bally’s or Equinox Gym anytime soon there are some common solutions hammered down for clients. Websites have got to become web conditioned or else stay unnoticed.
Hup, two, three, four…a web site in boot camp is treated a little differently than our GIs, perhaps more harshly even. The first thing we do is slap the website out of its isolation by building some links. This isolation, this lack of “link love” as it’s known, accounts for a great deal of why websites will sit unnoticed – and too often business owners are too busy to notice that their website is being ignored. And unless the business manager wants to drop everything and learn a new skill, he or she must find someone, a professional hopefully, to do this. There isn’t any getting around this. Search engine algorithms study links (as links serve as efficient e-recommendations) and do not reward an absence of them – at all.
A classic example of an isolated website that of a restaurant owned by a friend of mine. In the first dot-com boom he spent a good deal of money to build a state of the art website for his place. He loved the site, the staff and his friends loved the site, and everyone who was shown the site just loved it. But this was 1999 and search wasn’t a high priority; maybe it wasn’t wrong back then to just assume that people would find the site somehow.
The search process has improved like gangbusters since then and good real estate on the search engine results page (SERP) is at a premium. My friend’s website had been rendered invisible, lost in the weeds. People could only find it if they looked specifically for it by name; when using descriptive words such as “Lounge + New York City + Dancing”, it was not even in the top 100 mentioning of the major search engines. As far as interest generated via the Internet, he might as well have built a billboard in the woods.
And like an army recruit, candidates for web conditioning are broken down before they’re built up again, better and stronger. This means that instead of merely posting the facts of the website’s business with some nice pictures, we emphasize about what prospective customers might want it. For instance, an antique dealer specializing in foreign goods might think about what the kinds of items are most popular before creating a keyword list that people might enter into search engines when looking for those kinds of things, as opposed to just announcing themselves as a top dealer in foreign antiques. People want to find what sellers have, not just to find dealers. It sounds too obvious, but just look at how much advertising is wasted in announcing greatness – web copy for a business should be designed along the lines of appealing to the visitor, in anticipation of what they want. It’s how search works.
And once the visitor finds this site, the battle begins anew. The language, the same language that includes strategically placed keywords must now double as effective copy. The visitor’s attention must be held. This is the optimizing process, this is reworking a website. There are no shortcuts, no easy way to do it, but conditioning your website is like maintaining good health – it takes a bit of thought, some balance in the means of action, and regular check ups. It’s a lot to list now, but thinking right about websites done wrong is the first step to getting a website well again. If you have a friend or relative whose website is listless and ignored – do him or her a favor and tell them to get with the program.
Digg
del.icio.us
Blink
Stumble
Spurl
Reddit
Netscape
Furl
Article keywords: Web Conditioning
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com
Joseph Pratt
Media Analyst
TEL: 212-563-6455
Email: joseph@icmediadirect.com
ICMediaDirect.com
www.icmediadirect.com
|
|
| Top Advertising Articles |
- 1). What Does Your Logo Color Say About Your Business? By : Debbie LaChusa
And not only your logo, but also your website, your brochure, your business cards and any of your marketing materials for that matter.
Yes, colors do matter
They communicate feelings and emotions. They represent ideas and thoughts. So before you create a logo or any other piece of marketing make sure you select the right colors to communicate a personality that accurately represents you and your business.
|
- 2). Smart Advertising In Affiliate Marketing By : Peter Garant
Affiliate marketing is all about the promotion of products of an online company. The affiliate sign-ups with the advertiser or marketing arm of the online company and the affiliate becomes an active searcher of potential clients. Such set-up of affiliate marketing can become easily successful if the affiliate is aware of the importance of advertising.
|
- 3). The four sins of advertising By : Florie Lyn Masarate
Advertising is a very precise science. It finds its bases in many different fields including copywriting, psychology and even math. In recent decades, we have observed a slow but steady beautification of advertising.
For marketing experts this can work. For less savvy advertisers, it is a huge pitfall that draws attention away from the much more important aspects of a successful selling proposition.
|
- 4). 66 Ways To Promote Your product or Services By : Joe Trevison MBA CPA
Some guru sells his program because he has 60 ways of marketing. One Dentist was asked about his marketing he said he had 100 ways and use them all. Well I came up with 66 so far. I will work on more sometime after tax season or you can email me with ones I might have missed.
The true is you can’t use them all. Some are too costly for many of us. Some won’t work.
|
- 5). What You Should Know About Postcards By : Maricon Williams
Here are some of the salient facts about postcard printing and mailing:
1. Repeat postcard mailing is not throwing cash. One big shot is not enough. It needs continuous boost, continuous mailings. The reason is – one big launch cannot make your business neither can it change it.
2. The best price may not be the best catch. The old maxim – ‘you get what you pay for’ is not always applicable.
|
- 6). Internet Marketing 101 By : Travis Werbelow
Curious on what internet marketing is? Read this very simplified article on what it is and how you can make money from it. This is geared towards sparking an internet newbie’s interest on making money online.
|
- 7). The World of Advertising By : Peter Finers
No one remembers the date or even a year of birth of industry. Maybe it takes its roots from the first rake or the wheel created by some fellow from the cave. Thousands of years has past after simple inventions, bringing us greater, more advanced technologies. In the twenty first century people are surrounded by numerous products and services created to make our lives comfortable and bring pleasure.
|
- 8). Illustration in Marketing Materials By : viojieley
Not so many years ago businesses used to grunt at using illustrations in their marketing materials. But today, the use and influence of illustrations is growing right along.
An illustration, image or picture that does not express a distinct idea is a poor illustration. It should be clearly drawn with an abundance of ideas to be conveyed in the fewest line possible.
|
|
|
- 10). Boost Website Visits using Google Adwords By : Phil M.
The Google Adwords program is a very popular new program. If you want to sell products, you can easily use the Google Adwords program to give your web site more exposure. It is not hard to learn and it can mean big profits for your business.
So how does Google Adwords work?
The Google Adwords program is a PPC, a pay per click program. It combines the use of an ad with a title and text for a product or your website.
|
| New Advertising Articles |
|
|
|
|
- 3). How To Create A Profit Pulling Ezine Ad By : Kurt Naulaerts
Ezines are an excellent and very powerful way to promote your online business. With the appropriate copywriting you could have super results on your bottom line. Here are some fundamental rules for succeeding in your ad campaigns.
|
|
|
- 5). Business Card Printing Services By : Thomas Morva
The simple black and white business card has metamorphosed into designer versions. Unusual business cards are made from wood, plastic, metal, magnets, glass, or handmade paper. And some are printed in four colors while others are made using embedding or imprint technology. The purpose is to be unique and different, and make a lasting impression.
Depending on your thoughts, budget, design, and needs, a business card service will tell you what kind of printing your card will need.
|
- 6). Word Of Mouth Advertising - Steps To Create Awareness By : Sherry Frewerd
Word of mouth advertising creates an awareness campaign where your business information travels from person to person, creating a world wind of awareness. For a new business start-up, word of mouth marketing is often the best and most effective advertising method.
Newspaper print and classified ads can get very expensive, and have lost much of their effectiveness with the popularity of the internet in the past decade.
|
- 7). 10 Ways To Ensure Your Flyer Avoids The Bin By : Chris Riley
Flyers are an excellent marketing tool to promote a club night or event. They are commonly used for student promotions throughout the country.
You want your flyers to travel all over town, only you'd probably prefer it wasn't in the dustcart or stuck to the bottom of someone's shoe. What steps can you take to avoid this?
Here's a few hints and tricks to help your flyers avoid the trash:
1.
|
- 8). Advertising and Promoting Using Articles By : Justin Brown
A very efficient method to advertise your professional services, the products you are selling or simply to show how educated you are in a particular niche is by using the highly beneficial method of article marketing.
These articles that enclose at the end a short presentation of you or your business can be about various solution to actual problems, about everyday life or any other topic that will interest and inform a reader about the subject.
|
- 9). Don't Get Caught With Google Adsense Click Fraud By : Kaval Patel
Many web site owners are getting their Google Adsense account terminated when they have done nothing wrong to deserve the punishment. Considering the money that they are getting from Adsense, they would certainly want to get back into it, and no wonder as the money that can be made over time is huge!
It is that same consideration why the Google Adsense click fraud is thought of and why many people are getting into it.
|
- 10). Classified Advertising in Local Markets By : Janet21
Even with the growth of online classifieds and the increase in popularity in sites such as Craigslist, newspaper classifieds are still the preferred method of advertising for many wishing to sell unwanted items. This is evident in the number of print classified ads listed daily in newspapers and magazines throughout the country and worldwide. These.
|
|
|
