Indexing Vs Listing

By the way, and this is very important, there is a distinction between indexing and listing. Be very wary of paid services that guarantee that your site will be indexed within 24-48 hours. The truth is your site will be indexed automatically within a few days by most all of the major search engines. Indexing means that the Search Engine has spidered your site. This means that your site is in the search engine index or file, it does not mean that your site will appear in search results for a given keyword. Search results listings are quite a different matter. It may take weeks or even months to be listed in keyword results pages for Google, Yahoo and MSN. This is where Search Engine Optimization comes in. See our section on our SEO Guide.

A Listing Secret:

Do you want to get indexed quickly?  Create an xml site-map for Google an other search engines to aid the spidering of your site. XML site-maps are Google’s preferred method for spidering a site as they provide specific information back to Google about your site.  How does one create an xml sitemap?  You can create an xml sitemap free of charge at xml-sitemaps.comfor up to a 500 page website.  For unlimited sized websites you will have to pay a nominal fee.   Once you have created the xml sitemap you then need to submit it to Google.  This can be done by setting up a free Google Webmaster account.  Here you will submit your xml-sitemap to Google.  Google does not make any promises that your site will be indexed faster or that it will be listed faster, but my experience is that it helps a lot in addition to forums about indexing and listing. 

Banner Advertising

The biggest issue in advertising on the Internet is getting exposure for your web site. You might have the greatest looking site on the net, but if no one knows you are out there, it’s meaningless. One way to get potential customers to your site is through banner advertising.

Banner advertising is very much like display advertising. Simply put, your banner is a click away from a sale theoretically. It is the ultimate direct response vehicle. That being said, it’s very expensive and unless you are committed to a long term-run with your banner it really is not the appropriate first -time advertising medium that I would suggest. The reason for this is the high cost of placement for the banner. If you would like some proof, my suggestion is to visit any on-line version of a major newspaper, preferably a nationally distributed paper, and look up their banner advertising rates. An alternative is to utilize Google AdWords to promote your product.

Tip:

When you set up a Google Adwords Ad you have the ability to provide an alternating image ad with your text ad for thos puplisher sites that accept both types of ads. All of the available text ads can also be image ads as well although there is some evidence that certain sizes are more effective than others.

Internet marketing with a banner advertisement is in some ways akin to direct mail marketing, in that you have provided a mail piece (your banner) to your prospect. You must now get your prospect to open the mail piece (Click on your banner). Once you have gotten your prospect to open your mail piece, you must urge him or her to read it (The Sales or Landing page on your web site.) Your prospect must have some compelling reason to read further (your web site pages and content) and then respond either by post -paid return mail or toll -free number (your direct response mechanism on your web site).

Depending on the volume you have mailed (number of impressions you have bought for you banner,) and how much targeting you have done, your response rate can range from 0% to 3-5%.  Higher volume broad-based programs will yield very small response rates; however, more segmented and targeted programs to known buyers of a specific type of product will yield a higher response rate. 

There are a number of Internet promotional companies that will guarantee a specific number of clicks to your web site; however, as in direct mail, you must get those clicks to respond to your offer. In a later chapter, we will discuss fulfillment options.

The key to successful banner advertising is placement in very high traffic areas, placement in multiple sites for name recognition, placement for an extended time and spending a substantial amount of money.  

Article Marketing

Site content, in the form of your own articles, is probably the most effective means in getting listed on any search engine that I have seen to date. I have been advocating it for several years now and to be perfectly honest it enhances your site more than anything else with the exception of bona-fide links from other sites.

There are two ways of using your own articles for promoting your site or product. The first is writing and submitting your articles to article directories. This is one of the fastest and least expensive ways of promoting any product or website. The keys are a), making sure that you have picked the right directory and b), you have utilized the authors bio-box by including a link to your site or landing page.

Article marketing is one of the fastest ways to get noticed and it’s one of the cheapest as well. It doesn’t cost anything to list an article into an article directory. The only time you may incur a cost is if there is a fee to get a priority listing, (such as a first page listing of your article on a top directory site,)otherwise there aren’t any listing fees on most of the directory sites. There are a couple of article submitters on the market to make the tedious process easier. One of the newest on the market Article Submitter Software also helps write the articles as well. The advantage of an article submitter is that you load the article information in once and then decide which article directories to submit to and then you submit them one at a time. It’s the best approach because many of the reputable directories don’t care to be spammed, and as a result you might be banned.

Any way you cut it, article marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to promote your site and products.  I have proven that with thousands of back-links to my sites within a few weeks.  Article marketing is a fairly inexpensive promotional tool that many marketers overlook.

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