There are many approaches to marketing your website.  There are simple, local marketing techniques you can use and there are search engine marketing (SEM) techniques as well.  MURCON can advise you on both and help you implement an effective (and cost effective) website marketing program to achieve the traffic levels you desire.

Below are some thoughts on local marketing techniques and optimizing (search engine optimization or SEO) your website for natural or organic search.  We will add additional information concerning paid search techniques in the future.  MURCON can help you with local marketing, SEO, and paid search.  Contact us today for a quote!

			Local Website Marketing

To maximize traffic or visitors to your website you need to put your website address in front of as many people as possible as often as possible.  There are several ways to do this in conjunction with other marketing programs.  Here are a few possibilities:

• Business cards -- put your website address on your business cards.  Capitalize the first letter of each word in your address to make it easier to read.  Example: TheBestWesternBoots.com versus thebestwesternboots.com.
   
• Letterhead -- add your address to your letterhead and add your email address as well.
   
• Billboards, newspaper ads, magazine ads, fliers, business signage, press releases -- if you have any other forms of advertising, add your website address (and email address) to them.
   
• Email signature -- add an automated "signature" to the bottom of each of your emails that includes your website address.  You can always change the signature and periodically announce new products and services or other items that might be of interest to your email recipients.
   

In short wherever your business name appears your website address should appear there as well.  Inexpensive but powerful marketing!

			Search Engine Marketing -- Natural Search

Natural or algorithmic or organic search is a term for the primary search results that are returned on a search results page. There is both a science and an art to achieving a high rank in natural search. A high ranking is elusive; you can't buy it and you're never guaranteed of achieving or maintaining it. However, there are steps we can take to increase the probability that your pages will achieve a higher rank in natural search. It takes time, but it doesn't necessarily cost anything. This is the area where we think we can be of great help to you and it is what we'll explore in the rest of this article.

We've put together some recommended steps that you may want to consider in order to further optimize your home page and other pages for the search engines. You need to understand that search engines index pages not websites.  As you consider any modifications to your own pages, we must stress that you should always first consider what your customers want when they visit your pages. Nothing is more important than your customers, and your page content should speak to your customers first.

1. Keywords in your page title and description - Identify a set of relevant words and phrases that best represent you and your service offering. One way to think about this is "I would want someone to find my listing when they search on _______". Once you're satisfied with your list, try to include as many of these words and phrases in your page title and description. If you have a real estate website a partial list of terms might be as follows:

   MyWebsite.com, real estate, residential real estate, commercial, commercial real estate, residential property, commercial property, buyers representative, buyers rep, listing agent, northeast georgia, north east georgia, million dollar club, jackson county, jefferson

   This list is by no means comprehensive, and you might have a unique set of terms that will work best for you.
   
   
2. Website name and the industry your website or page content relates to - Mention your website name and incorporate the keywords you have decided upon, but don't over do it.  You need some keyword "density", but "stuffing" a page full of almost nothing but keywords may hurt you more than help.
   
   
3. Location and frequency of keywords - Search engines will check to see if the keywords appear near the top of the web page, such as the headline or in the first few sentences/paragraphs of the text. Search engines are looking for content. The more content your page has on a specific topic, the more likely it may be deemed as relevant to a search for that topic. You should create detailed content for each page that is relevant to the title and description for the page.  One page, one subject. Also, text that appears more often, or in slightly larger font at or near the top of the page is considered more relevant.  Do use headings to separate your content.
   
   Click the link below to view an example that incorporates the above 3 tips:
   
   http://www.thevillagesofpendergrass.com/active_adult.htm
   
   This page is a good example of being search engine optimized. The page incorporates relevant keywords early and often, and emphasizes the industry area that is relevant to the page.  Other pages on this site use text inline (discussed below) that is crawlable as opposed to text embedded in an image. It incorporates all these things while still using images and pictures to give it a unique flair.
   
   Again, you are the expert at knowing your customers, and your pages should speak to your customers first. Be sure to convey your style and uniqueness in your listings. The simple point here is: use relevant keywords often to describe your products and services.
   
   
4. Use text inline instead of embedded text in images - Major search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo!, MSN) crawl content that is viewable on your pages; the actual text of your listings and home page. We recommend using text inline when describing your services and not using embedded text in images. Search engine crawlers cannot read/crawl any text that is embedded in an image, so your listing will not be categorized as relevant for those keywords listed in the image. A good example would be a listing that looks like this because all the text is inline and not part of a large image:
   
   http://braseltontilefactoryinc.com/Tile.html
   
   A good test to see how your page will look to search engines is to highlight your page, copy and paste it into a notepad document. This is what will be visible to the search engines.
   
   Keep in mind that customers like to see images on pages including photographs of you if applicable. We recommend that you use an effective combination of text and images on your pages. Basically, if you want your pages to be friendly to search engines, you should not use one large image for your page with text imbedded on the image versus in text around it.  A good website developer -- MURCON -- will also use "alternate text" with images.  Ask us about that technique and how it helps.
   
   
5. Use relevant keywords when linking to your pages.
   As we'll describe in the next Section 6, linking to your website from other websites or directories can benefit your ranking on search engines. When and if you link to your pages, there are essentially 3 ways you can do it:
    
   1. text only: http://www.MURCON.com    (no hyperlink)
   2. html only: http://www.MURCON.com/murconweb/webportfolio.htm   (hyperlinked to the page)
   3. relevant key word: MURCON Website Marketing   (hyperlinked to the page)
      
      
   Example A is the least effective way to link in terms of search engine optimization. Example C is the best way to link because search engines not only look at the url as relevant but the key words that are associated to the link too.
   
   
6. Links to your pages on your website (inbound links) - Maintaining a blog and/or website (or other presence) off of your main website for your business can also be effective for search engine optimization. Search engines will measure the relevance of a page on your website based, in part, on the quantity of links it has to it from other places on the Internet. You can link to your website from other sources in different ways including:
   
   
   1. Blog or Podcast - Whether you have blog or do podcasts or plan to in future, these are examples of web sites you control on which you can place as many links back to your website pages as desirable.  (MURCON offers the best of both worlds -- the BlogCast -- from its MURCONWeb.net website.  Click here to review the BlogCast service!)
      
      
   2. Craigslist - Craigslist is a local community classifieds and forums. Go to www.craigslist.org to list your offering.
      
   3. GoogleBase - Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content that they'll host and make searchable online. You have multiple listings to your Keen homepage and listings, your blog and your website. Go to www.googlebase.com to list your offerings.
      
      
   4. Ebay - You may want to consider creating a listing on www.ebay.com.
      
      
   5. Directories and More - There are other places on the Internet where you can list or link to your business. Some require a payment and others are free. We don't have a comprehensive list, but we urge you to explore and be creative. Options to consider include Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), general online directories such as Yahoo Directories (payment required) and dmoz.org, and even niche directories like Ufo Seek. Only list your website or pages on directories that are relevant to the content of your website or page.  Putting a link to a bakery website in a real estate directory will probably not help you!  We'd love to hear from you if you have other directory website suggestions.

			Search Engine Marketing -- Paid Search (Pay Per Click)

Coming soon!