No matter what your goals are regarding your company’s website, it is vital that numbers of inbound traffic and your conversion rates are consistently increasing. Ensuring that visitors from your website are not only plentiful, but also relevant to the product or service your company supplies is vital when looking to increase sales or ‘conversions’.
So, as with every strategy we must begin with a simple starting point:
- Who is our target market?
- Which range of people is your product or service aimed at?
Many companies provide products and services that can be applied to most demographics; it’s fair to say that a national online clothing megastore is accessible to most genders and ages if the wears are suitable. Many online stores however, provide items and service that have a smaller customer base and therefore may need a little extra help to pull in the customers they are looking for. So, here are a couple of the marketing methods which could make a world of difference to the success of an online business.
Paid Ads
Commonly referred to as banners; this is a simple, straight forward method of advertising on various websites which your target market would likely visit. For example, let’s say you own an online store that deals in office supplies; it’s fair to say companies that would buy bulk office supplies would also be interested in products such as computer hardware and software, and perhaps office space rental. These would be ideal websites to place linked banners on; the adverts would link through to a relevant product page on your website and could result in a sale. A clever tactic here is to place a conversion box or ‘shopping cart’ feature on each page, this makes a product more accessible and easily purchased to prospective customers.
Search Engine Optimisation
This involves changing features on and off site to allow your website to rank higher on SERPS (search engine results pages). Researching and sourcing search terms which apply to your website, product, service or brand name will give you some indication as to what search terms you will benefit from the most. For example, ensuring the words ‘Ink Cartridges Northwest’ is on your ‘Ink Cartridges’ page will help this page to rank well in terms of ‘on-site’ content.
The other side to this is the off-site aspects of your website. Search engines need evidence from other websites that you are supplying quality content and are a trustworthy source; this is where the power of the link comes into play.
Links are much like votes or vouches; if other websites which are relevant to your office supplies store (e.g. computer hardware stores) link to your ‘Ink Cartridges’ page using the text ‘Ink Cartridges Northwest’ then this tells search engines that your page is specifically about this topic. The number of links you get from strong, trustworthy and relevant websites will contribute to how highly your site will rank. This applies to each search term you wish to target.
This is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SEO, and sizable companies should seek to find local SEO teams with a successful history to help their website rank higher in the SERPS. Choosing a local SEO team will make meetings easier for both parties and commuting less troublesome, our Northwest based office supplies company may benefit from searching for digital marketing Manchester, and finding a successful and dedicated team to lead their site to success.
So there we have two methods of online advertising and marketing that could skyrocket your website’s success and spread your brand name effectively.
This article was written by Daniel Travis Brown, for more useful tips and information follow Dan on Twitter @DanTravisBrown