Custom Website Design News

“How To Drive Targeted Traffic To Your Website” by Seth Rand

In order for a website to be successful, you need to have people visiting it, which is often known as website traffic. Of course, we are not just looking for website traffic. We are looking for targeted traffic to our website. Targeted traffic is defined as unique visitors to your website that are interested in the products and/or services being offered on your website, so that they have the potential of turning into a customer and/or client. The more targeted the traffic is, the higher conversion rate that you will have. Generally, the higher conversion rate that you have, the lower your cost per conversion (CPA) will be. 

Now the question is, how do we get targeted traffic to our website in a cost effective way, so that we can potentially have a positive ROI (return on investment)? These are some of options:1. Search Engine Marketing - The # 1 search of targeted traffic on the internet is search engine marketing. This includes the major search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, as well as the less used search engines, such as Ask, Altavista, AllTheWeb, HotBot, and Lycos. Because the person is searching for a keyword related to the products and/or services that your website offers, that means that there is a strong possibility that they will be the targeted traffic that you are seeking. The two primary ways of accomplishing this is generating organic targeted traffic through search engine optimization, or through pay per click marketing in the sponsored link area of the search engines.

  a. Search Engine Optimization - search engine optimization is the process of getting your web site in the top organic search engine results in the major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and MSN, in addition to Ask, Altavista, AllTheWeb, HotBot, and Lycos, for your website’s main target keywords and keyword phrases. This is often the most cost effective way to drive targeted traffic your website on a long term basis. For more info on available search engine optimization packages, visit http://www.iconwebsitedesign.com/.  

  b. Pay Per Click Marketing - You can get targeted traffic to your website immediately though platforms such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter. The ads can be in contextual ads, banner ads, or video ads. Pay per click marketing campaigns are highly customizable campaign, based on keywords, geotargeted area, date and time, maximum cost per click, and maximum daily budget.

2. CPM Marketing - this includes banner advertising, email marketing, text message marketing, fax marketing, and are usually paid for on a CPM (cost per thousand) impressions basis. These methods can be successful if done multiple times to the same market, but are often less cost effective than search engine marketing.

3. Social Media Marketing - This is the newest form of internet marketing. It involved using free accounts on high traffic websites, including social networking sites, social bookmarking websites, blogs, and forums, such as MySpace, FaceBook, Linkedin, YouTube and Digg. It can be very labor intensive if done correctly, but with little to no out-of-pocket expense.  

4. Affiliate Marketing - this can including online affiliates through major networks including Commission Junction and Linkshare, or real affiliate relationships tat extend beyond the internet.

5. Media Advertising - this including TV and Radio advertising. Media advertising can either be for branding purposes or for direct marketing purposes. If it is driving targeted traffic to your website, it would be considered direct marketing. 

6. Print Marketing - this can including direct mail campaign, utilizing door hangers, passing our flyers, newspaper advertising, and/or magazine advertising. For your graphic design and printing needs, I recommend Preferred Print.

In summary, there are many marketing options to drive targeted traffic to your website, however search engine marketing may be the most cost effective way.

Seth can be reached at seth@iconpress.com with any questions or comments related to this article, or for a free quote on any of your graphic design, printing, website design, and/or internet marketing implementation or consultation needs.

125 Ways to Make Money Online
 
Do you currently own your own business? Does that business have a website? If so, is that website generating revenue. If not, don’t you wish that it did? Whether you currently own a business, or have an idea for your own website, it can take time and money to accomplish that goal. If you take advantage
 
It takes a combination of two factors to have a successful website: a quality website and unique traffic to that website.
 
Question # 1 - What is a quality website, and how to I accomplish developing it?
 
Answer: First, you must decide what your website is going to offer its visitors.Five types of website’s that can generate revenue:
 
1 - Sell products - this would be an e-commerce website that sells products, either physical or virtual products - example: preferredprint.com which sells full color printing.
2 - Offer services - you would collect money in return for providing a service or services - example: iconwebsitedesign.com which offers custom website design services.
3 - Generate leads - have a lead generating website in various industries and resell them - examples: buyerzone.com and lowermybills.com
4 - Proprietary software development - fill a need, fill a void, or improve upon existing options - use the software yourself or resell it (license fees/monthly fees)
5 - Offering quality information and news - have an online newspaper or online directory or a blog with quality content that is updated often and make make money from advertising and/or industry related affiliates - examples: freebusinessdirectoryonline.com, fullcolorprintingnews.com, customwebsitedesignnews.com.
 
Next, if you want the website to be successful, you must keep in mind the following five things prior to and during the development process:
 
1 - It has to be user friendly. That includes loading quickly, being easy to read, having a strong call to action, and being easy to navigate. 
2 - It should fill a need or void. That could be offering something better or something less expensive. That can also mean offering something new and unique.
3 - It should be visually appealing, and generate the confidence of the prospective customer and/or client. It should make you appear large and experienced, even if you are a new company or a company of one. 
4 - The prospect customer and/or client should feel secure. This includes installing an SSL certificate on all e-commerce website’s, lead generating website’s, and/or members only website’s that request sensitive material, such as a social security number, bank account number, or health records. Examples of companies that can provide this security, including a trusted SSL certificate, are verisign.com, mcafeesecure.com, and godaddy.com.  
5 - Work with a web development company with experience and quality testimonials/references.
 
If your website’s does those five things, you are now in a good position to be successful.

In regards to the advertising and affiliate marketing as sources of revenue:

Advertising - All five types of website’s listed above can make additional revenue from advertising. How much revenue can be generated is based upon the traffic that your website receives, and the positioning of the ads on your website. Advertising would be the primary source of revenue on an informational site, and a secondary goal on all other types of websites. Revenue from the ads can be based on a CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per impression) model. An alternative option is to charge a flat fee for the ad space, but it will most likely still be based on the clicks or impressions. Advertising revenue is at its best when the site is receiving a high volume of organic traffic (little to no direct advertising/marketing cost to get that traffic) examples: myspace.com, facebook.com, youtube.com

An advertising platform that can be integrated into your website is https://www.google.com/adsense. It can be used for contextual, graphic banner or video banner ads that are sold by Google and put on your website. You then are profit sharing with Google, and do not need to sell ad space. The revenue generated is based on a CPC (cost per click) advertising platform.
 
Affiliate marketing - This is usually a secondary goal of a website to generate additional revenue (rarely a primary goal). You would place banner ads for affiliates on your website and receive commission per conversion (sales, lead, or application) rather than getting paid per click or impression.
Question # 2 - How do I generate traffic to my website?

1 - Search Engine Optimization - search engine optimization is the process of getting your website in the top organic search engine results in the major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and MSN for your site’s main target keywords. This is often the most cost effective way to drive traffic to a website on a long term basis.  Through this process, we recommend making directory submissions, blog postings, comments on other people blog postings, becoming a member of social networking sites, and submitting your site to social bookmarking sites. These techniques will help improve your organic search engine ranking, but also potentially provide some direct traffic to your site.

2 - Pay Per Click advertising -  You can get immediate traffic to your website though platforms such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, and AdReady. The ads can be in contextual, graphic banner, or video formats. Pay per click campaigns are highly customizable campaign, based on keywords, geo-target area, date and time, maximum cost per click, and maximum daily budget.

3 - Email Marketing - blast out a custom designed HTML email to a targeted opt-in email list

4 - Affiliate Marketing - sign up with affiliate marketing network and apply to become an approve online affiliate with hundreds, potentially thousands of companies.

5 - Direct Marketing - this can include TV, radio, and direct mail campaigns

In summary, if you can build a quality website, as defined above, offering quality products, services, or information, that is receiving unique traffic at a cost effective rate, you will have a successful online business.
Written by Seth Rand - Vice President of Icon Website Design and Internet Marketing Expert
 
About the author: Seth Rand is the Vice President of Icon Website Design. Seth’s role at Vice President includes being the project manager for all of Icon’s custom web development projects, and overseeing all of Icon’s internet marketing services, including search engine optimization, pay-per-click campaign building and management, affiliate marketing, email marketing, and online banner advertising. Seth has managed the development of over 250 website’s, along with over $1 million in pay per click marketing, and has achieved over 60,000 Top 10 organic search engine rankings for himself and his clients through search engine optimization. Seth is a licensed Google Advertising Professional and a Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador, as well as a member of SEMPO and the eMarketing Association.
 
Seth can be reached at seth@iconpress.com with any questions or comments related to this article, or for a free quote on any of your graphic design, printing, website design, and/or internet marketing implementation or consultation needs.

In its formal response, Yahoo said its board had concluded Microsoft’s unsolicited offer “substantially undervalues” the Sunnyvale-based company. For now, Yahoo and MSN will remain seperate search engines. For search engine optimization or pay per click management on Google, Yahoo, and MSN, call us at 1-800-558-1017.

Microsoft has made a $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo! in an attempt to further consolidate the Web advertising industry and create a credible competitor to Google.  If MSN and Yahoo combined, Microsoft would control over 30% of all internet traffic in the United States. My doing so, it would allow for more website traffic for my Yahoo Search Marketing clients. 

One of the things that doesn’t cease to amaze me as I look around the People’s paper click campaigns is that most of the paper click campaigns are diverted to the company’s homepage.

To me there is a major problem with that technique because it throws the potential client into a maze of navigation for them to figure out where they need to click next to get a quote or where’s your contact information on the contact us page.

Based on the fact that every single website is different and no two websites of the same.  Most likely, the navigational elements that each website is constructed along is going to vary.

My personal attitude is that of your spending thousands and/or tens of thousands of dollars on potential clients why would you want to push them into your home page. The company that I refer all my business to, which is www.iconwebsitedesign.com actually creates custom landing pages for pay per click campaigns. What this does is it increases the conversion rates from potential customers to actual customers by up to 60% more leads.

Now have to tell you how no rocket scientist, but to me that sounds at a pretty great idea.  So this is some in the think of when you’re doing your global optimization, MSN optimization, Yahoo optimization, as well as any in all Internet marketing or search engine optimization.

The reason that I like this company so much is because there attention to detail. And most importantly is all the times that we abuse them in the past we actually have gotten above and beyond our expectations.

That’s why Tim Maidstone porn when you’re looking for a company to work what to do your web development.  It’s important that you’d hire high quality website designers from a reputable web design firm.

They also been very good at the level of Web hosting as well.  We have experience almost no down time while using their servers for or roar e-mails as well as our e-commerce website.

We also been very happy with the surest of their programming team that did all of our PHP programming for our website www.preferredprint.com I guess you’d said in a very happy client and will continue to refer clients to them on a regular basis.

There are some website development companies that are doing unethical practices such as warning or website templates as actual custom-designed websites.

Sometimes a website companies will do is I actually run pay per click specials on very stiff and search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Annual click on these things and you’ll see things that look like unbelievably nice websites, and some people actually don’t have these websites designed and believe its own is just create their own original custom-designed for them and them alone. We’ll finance a lot of these companies out there actually taking templates that they by anywhere from $80 to $100.  And then use that as your homepage. It’s not to say that you couldn’t do this and still have a look good.  It just that, if you’re thinking that you’re getting a custom website design as one of a kind and euros only and then you find out the thousands of different companies aboard the same website as you.  It really does take away from what it is that you’re trying to create.

Now granted even know this website may be a buyer for template.  There is still a lot more work generally that does have to go on for the completion this website. Many websites that have been design nowadays are what they call e-commerce websites.  These websites a very intense and do require a live Web programming using various different programs such as PHP programming, my SQL,.net, and programs such as cold fusion.

 Other important part of the website you’re going have to have done for you.  Is all of your Internet marketing programming. This consists of search engine optimization, and all the other different optimizations for the different search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Believe it or not, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done even on a paper click campaign. Your paper click is more than just plain per click campaigns. These campaigns fill out to be optimize. There are different optimizations for the different search engine such as Google optimization, MSN Optimization and Yahoo optimization.

It’s also very important, that you Web hosting company. You must do the research necessary view that a successful website, and the successful marketing campaign on the Web. As for them concerned the fastest and easiest and the least expensive of all of these ways is to create a search engine optimization package for your company.

I can imagine how many people own websites in the world and don’t have those website set up for Internet marketing and search engine optimization purposes.

I can imagine spending the time that it takes to create a custom website design. The sit down with a web development company.  Cool roll your different web hosting and PHP programming and various different web programming needs. And then not do something with your website. The question is do people actually distinctive even a create a website spent tens of thousands of dollars creating this huge e-commerce store and then magically to skin a start doing business. The reason websites do business on the Internet is one of four or five different reasons.

1.) One reason that you would do business with an e-commerce website is because you have optimized your ads on Google ad words, which is known as global optimization.  And now you have a pay per click campaign is spending money on this form of marketing and advertising on a regular basis. You can as well do the same thing for MSN and Yahoo.  They have ways that you can optimize your MSN page, and optimize the Yellow Pages as well.

2.)  Another way that people get a lot of businesses are websites is to do a thing which is known as search engine optimization. Obviously it’s very important to find a reputable company that does custom website design, as well as e-commerce websites.  More times than not, if they have these two capabilities in-house.  Generally they know something about search engine optimization.

3.) Another thing that businesses will do is to create and get on file with an affiliate program.  There are many different companies that either a supply you with the affiliate programs such as commission Junction. Or some companies actually go out and build their own affiliate program and go out and seek out their own affiliates.

As far as I’m concerned, whatever it is that you’re doing the thing to your disk in a create a website by URL, and it’s going to be successful is like pie-in-the-sky.  It’s literally the the equivalent of expecting to win the lottery and never buy a ticket.  Not only is it not probable it’s not even possible. My suggestion is, if you’re reading this article get an action final reparable company.  The company that I would refer to you today is www.iconwebsitedesign.com I feel that these people are very good at what it is that they do a referred them numerous clients.  I’ve got nothing but praise back and thank use as a result of the referring icon website design to these different businesses.

Is a couple different things, that you want to keep in mind, when you’re trying to create a website that is actually going to good to sales.

Here are some of the questions that you want to ask yourself.

1.) The first question is how people can actually find your website.  This is almost as a type of a business plan, for lack of a better word is you have to find a specific market that you’re going to be going after and then figure out how backline is actually going to find your website. One of many different ways to actually create traffic to your site is to do a process which is known as search engine optimization. This is obviously one of the better ways to do it because after the search engine optimization is completed.  They generally is in a lot of pics course attached to the search engine optimization.  Where is when you do pay per click marketing.  There is a lot of fix course to lie to these marketing dollars throughout the life of the marketing campaign. It’s one of these things is you page ago, and when you stop paying you stop going.  However, it is still effective way to create sales to an e-commerce website.

2.) The second thing that you are going to want to keep in mind is finding a web development company that can fulfill your needs. As well as predetermining the company that you’re going to have do you are web hosting. I’ll explain why that’s so important. For starters your website, meaning the graphic design part of the website.  The way the website feels and looks is obviously very important. This is important because if people don’t like the way website looks and feels the chance of creating a natural selves fairly unlikely. The second most important part of this process is a website can look good, but at the level of functionality can be a complete nightmare. There are various different reasons, this can happen. One is that when the programmer was designing the back and a system probably using the program referred to is PHP programming, which is a database program that allows you to track, as well as create different fields for people to deal to purchase various different products. If this for the website is not in them properly, it becomes a nightmare at the level of making changes to and as well as people being able to navigate through your site.  The other important part of this process is the final count.  That can deliver the right web hosting account for your e-commerce website. I can’t tell you how many times have been to websites and during the checkout process but won’t fire server ends up crashing and/or more so slow that have no desire to buy the product that I won in the first place. It is imperative for you to pick the right web hosting company for your e-commerce website!

I usually personally instruct my clients to start with the search engine optimization aspect on their website first.  And later on, create your Google ad words account, as well as the different paper click campaigns for MSN and Yahoo as well. It’s also very important if you’re going to spend dollars on paper click advertising that you work with a professional that can optimize the accounts for both MSN and Yahoo as well as Google.

On an average.  It has been said that a national retailer spend roughly $99,500 dollars in 2006 on paper click advertising.  The course per acquisition is expected to increase by 33%  In 2007.

(2007 ), it is expected that companies are going to be looking to do much more at the level of search engine optimization than they have in the past, to offset the return on investment.

This would not suggest that people would not continue to use pay per click advertising, otherwise known as sponsored links for what they would do is to offset this spend by doing search engine optimization. It would make sense that if you could come up on some local results, as well as two and three word phrases that more you could do is spend more money in various different areas for your national searches and/or global searches.

When one ponders the growth of the Web/Internet business.  The numbers of new websites and brand-new URLs is staggering. It was said that in 1998.  If you do not have a website and/or web presence within the next seven to 10 years you will not find yourself out of the marketplace. To me it seems like it’s all come to fruition.

Here we are right now and 2007 and Google is presently billing out $1 billion a month and pay per click advertising. If someone would have told you five years ago that a company called Google was in the jump onto the scene and create a search engine.  That was going to do $1 billion a month in pay per click advertising.  You would probably tell them that you have a bridge to sell them in Brooklyn.

Now the next thing to do is to try and find a reparable comp money that could deliver a custom website design as well as a backend system that may would be powered by PHP programming for you to be able to do all of the different administration necessary for you have a successful e-commerce store.

It’s unfortunate the stories that I hear of money invested into creating different websites, and back and e-commerce websites, and how people literally a pist away tens of thousands of dollars in hopes that this person would be able to deliver on what it is that they said they would do.

And then the next challenges when she finally do get a website trying to find a competent.  It doesn’t do the massive amounts of traffic on any one given server is the next challenge. I know for myself, awhile back I thought that I would go with the biggest company on the planet, which some of you may heard of called network solutions. I was really under the impression that this company was going to be able to wow me based on their sheer volume of websites that they always on Internet. Think again.

Network solutions at a premium on a shared server and in the middle of the day my website would go in complete shutdown. It would stalk crawling so slow that anybody in the middle the checkout would definitely jump off of the checkout process. This obviously didn’t work for me for the simple reason that I’m in business to make sales not lose them.

Said another way is what is your company statistics day in and day out? I think that it’s very vital to find out what your conversion rate is off your website. For every 500 clicks, you get one sale generally. Or do you make itself for every 1000 clicks on your website. If you haven’t already done so you’ll going to want to install some type of stack counter on your website.

Here are two different back town is that I like to use. One of them is referred to as www.stat counter.com I’ve used this service quite a bit I like it because first off it’s free, and it also gives you a lot of great information about your website. This particular stat counter will actually give you all the different people in figure site on any given day, where they found you on the Internet.  Under whatever particular keyword they search for. It actually has an option when you click on it that says keyword activity. When you click on a keyword activity button it actually will show you all the different keywords that people found your website under on the various different search engine. This is obviously based on the organic traffic that you have coming to your website and any given day. I like this in particular because I can see what people are searching more than normal on all these different statistics. Like for the printing company, if I’m getting the a high conversion rate at the level of full color printing. And also how many people are actually searching on the full color printing and what position the website is actually organic traffic.

When I speak of organic traffic when I’m speaking about is where does your site actually show up in Google. Whenever you do a search on Google.  You’ll find out that in the upper right-hand corner it’ll tell you 1 out of 10  out of  50 million possible webpages. Anything under the top sponsored links to what is known as the organic traffic within Google’s search engines results.  The organic side of blue well, what it means is that you’re not paying per click. I tell people all the time when you finally on global under my printing company.  You could click from now until the cows come home.  It’s not come across me any additional money.

This is why I tell people all the time that search engine optimization is such an important tool for you to have with inside your website. I always stressed the people what you need to find a firm that’s going to be able to take care of all of these needs for you.  And by the way is a lot of different needs more needs and you’ll even be aware of.  You know, it’s one of those things you just don’t know what you don’t know. It’s like walking into a mechanic nowadays and tell him what you think is wrong with your car.  The fact is the average consumer has no clue what goes on underneath the hood of their car. I’m not saying it’s like it’s a bad thing, but I really don’t know much about what goes on under the Michael I know I turned the key in the car starts and I drive it is about as much as I know about clause and the engines that run them.

 If you are looking to create a new website and have any title Web presence even have to find a rental firm to work with.  They have to know all about web programming they have to know all about graphic design, and Web design.  The multimedia company that you deal with is going to have to know a lot about a lot of different things and the level of your websites, productivity and profitability. Also been have to know about search engine optimization.

The reason that search engine optimization is such an important processes, because whatever they do in the show up within the three major search engines. Trippi said is really only one major search engine which happened to be Google. The other two, which is the next biggest Yahoo and MSN only represent a very small part of marketplaces for searches go online. They are only responsible for about 15% of all additional searches online. So obviously the most important part of your search engine optimization has to be geared towards Google