Are you in the process of building your first online business and wondering how much you will lose and gain by marketing your product online? Are you wondering how much you will profit if you establish an internet business? If you keep on wondering and thinking about these things without taking any action, you will end up with nothing! How will you know the results if you don’t start your business right now and take the necessary steps to gain more sales and profits?

Put Thought into Action

You probably have a pre-planned online marketing strategy related to your internet business to produce massive sales, earn a lot of profits and rapidly increase your return of investment. You have to put that in action to determine if it will really work. It is more beneficial to apply your ideas rather than confine them to your brain!

Recognize that Competition Does Exist

Competition is very difficult to market your business on the internet. It’s a win-win process though. You really have to do your own research on how to beat your online competition or better yet, seek the advice of an online marketing professional. The truth is, establishing an online business is easy; gaining page ranking and online visibility is a bit more difficult.

Develop a Search Engine Marketing Plan

To conquer the online competition in your niche market, you need to have a dynamic and effective online marketing strategy that will serve as your instrument to defeat all your competition. Search engine marketing is a master plan that will lead to increased page ranking, proper positioning, and a volume of traffic resulting in a rapid return of investment and abundant profits. This strategy will give your competitors a run for their money!

Page Ranking Lacks Great Importance

On October 15, 2009, Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, said that website owners should not give great importance on page ranking because it’s already been removed from Google’s webmaster tools. Are you surprised by this revelation? Accept it as fact. Use this knowledge to gain advantage in your online business. Change your mind setting; don’t give more value on getting higher page ranking because it’s just a waste of valuable time and energy. Your main focus now is to make your website visible and engaging for the net surfers to gain volume of traffic that converts to sales.

Gain Internet Visibility

There are many ways to gain visibility in the cyber world. Consider the following:

1. You can submit your website to major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing and MSN.
2. You can advertise your website and products to social media such as an online discussion sites, weblogs, podcasts and social bookmarking.
3. You can post your business to a social network service like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and many others to be recognized.
4. You can create newsletters and send them to various social bookmarking sites for exposure.

Use Organic SEO

Most importantly, Search engine marketing which includes Search Engine Optimization can help improve your visibility online through organic search results. What is that? One example of organic SEO is to post articles you have written to Article Directories. Visitors to these directories can in turn post your article to their website. The advantage is that your article contains a link back to a particular page that you want to target on your website. When the search engines find this link from your article on another website that leads back to your website, the engines rank your page and website higher each time they find such a link.

Targeted Visitors Importance

Targeted visitors are important to search engine marketing as they bring targeted web site traffic. We need to emphasize the word targeted visitors here because we are reaching out to searchers who are already interested in the type of products you are selling. To reach your targeted visitors, you need to optimize your site for the search engines. This includes choosing relevant targeted keywords or phrases and creating unique, fresh and informative content. A highly optimized site can attract a great deal of visitors.

Value of Useable and Navigable Website

In combination with the above plan for search engine marketing, the usability and navigability of your site must also be given a great amount of value so that your prospective customers will not wind up leaving your site because of an unfavorable site experience. Your customer will most likely revisit your site because of their experience on a previous visit. If you seek to achieve great consumer experiences, you will be flooded with online traffic through an inspired loyalty to your products. It is very nice to see that you are attracting more visitors because you render exceptional customer satisfaction through usability and navigability. A user-friendly site is indeed a great factor that keeps prospect customers and generates online traffic.

Develop a Search Engine Marketing Strategy

To overcome obstacles and gain a successful ending to the internet battles, you as a website owner must develop and formulate search engine marketing strategies that will overcome the competition that lays siege to your position. By expanding your online visibility, you are not only advertising your products or goods but you are also establishing back links which result in increased page ranking. In spite of what Susan Moskwa of Google said, it is desirable for your website to show on the first page of a search response. Just keep the value of page rank in a proper perspective as to its value.

Ways to Expand Visibility

Remember, when you join forums, submit your website to search engine directories, create an ezines, publish an article and submitting it to social bookmarking, you are substantiating your value to the search engines which leads to a higher page ranking. This is one way to say that an increased online visibility is proportionate to an increased page ranking. The more you expand your visibility, the higher your page ranking. Do you get the point?

To win the war in search engine marketing, try to focus on expanding your online visibility and increasing your traffic to increase your online page ranking. I am sure through this process you are developing a unique approach to conquer your online competition. Your goal of a rapid increase in ROI and abundant profits can easily be reached through this process. You will surely achieve the pinnacle of success in online businesses!

Chris Hunter is an expert in Web Design and Search Engine Marketing and runs a blog about Internet Marketing techniques. He has been designing websites since 1994 both as a hobby and now professionally. He is currently VP of Operations for Web Unlimited based north of Houston, TX. To find out more about Search Engine Marketing, go to: http://www.webunlimited.com/articles/houston_seo_services.

This is a problem – a big one.

Why is it a problem? Because most websites are underutilized resources that most businesses neglect and then tell all of the friends that they “tried” the Internet and it “just didn’t work.”

NOTE – I keep putting these things in quotes not only because I’m being a little sarcastic, but because I’ve actually heard these things.

Your Website Has ONE Goal – Generate Leads

In the most fundamental thinking, your website has one goal – only one. It’s to generate leads. It’s that simple really. Get traffic to your site, convert them, and get them to come back.

I come across clients that just don’t understand this principle and think their site should have XX feature or YY feature and they end up focusing on the wrong things – things that don’t generate leads.

I’ve personally designed well over 300 websites in the past 16 years of doing this “Internet Gig” and I’ve just about seen it all. I’ve had people come to me with the greatest idea in the world, but a horrible marketing strategy and seen them flop. I’ve seen horrible ideas with a great marketing strategy that were hugely successful.

What I want to discuss today is why your website is more than “just a website.” Your website is the first thing that people should  see. It’s not only your storefront, it’s your entire building with a huge billboard on top of it – metaphorically.

You wouldn’t leave your businesses building with a huge cracked window would you? Or would you let the grass grow up to a person’s height? Of course you wouldn’t. You would either cut it or hire somebody to do it and fix that window.

Your Website IS Your Storefront

Your website is in a way your storefront – whether you are selling product or generating leads. It’s the first thing that people search for (and hopefully find) when they hear good things about your company. So why would you work so hard to get people to refer business to you and then let your website just sit there? For instance, I come across websites that look outdated. And when I say outdated, I mean, really outdated – like 1998. Yikes.

Or I see sites with news items from 2007. Wow. (Note – it’s 2010).

Just like a normal brick and mortar store, make sure your website looks up to date (not 10 years old), doesn’t have old news or blog posts on it and looks like you actually care about it. It’s the first thing people see, so make it count.

Your Website is Your Best (or Worst) Sales Person

Your website is not only your storefront – it’s also your best (or worst) sales person. You wouldn’t believe the websites that I run across that say “Welcome to our company” on the front page. Wow. You just told your visitor that they found you. Great.

I suggest to my clients that they instead put something that talks to their clients – like “Better Houses Built by XX Company” or “Ridding the World of XX”. These headlines will talk directly to your visitors and tell them what you do.

That brings me to another pet peeve. Tell me what you actually do. You have three seconds from the time that a person comes to your site to when they leave if you haven’t captured their attention. If the visitor has to hunt to figure out what you do, then you will most likely lose them. So put somewhere that can be found what you do whether it’s pest control or web design.

The point is, that your website should be selling your company and not putting up generic stuff that everybody else has. It’s basic Marketing – distinguish yourself from the pack. Your website is the first and best place to do this.

Speaking of Internet Marketing…

Your website should be your biggest referral source. We get one to two leads per day through each of our websites at Web Unlimited — and yes, we have more than one. This happens because we of course put the energy into getting traffic and then converting it.

First we work on getting traffic to the site through search engines, social media, and newsletters. Then we constantly work on our sites to optimize them and get the most referrals we can. We push the sites as far as we can take them and then turn around and work on generating traffic again.

Websites are a lot of work, but they can be your best (and cheapest) employee working 24/7 on getting new leads. Your website should include a sound marketing strategy and sales funnel that leads people from the front page to a lead generation page.

We suggest you spend your marketing budget on your website before anything else as that person with an iPhone is searching for you – they just have to be able to find you. Then once you’re found – make sure you make the visit count and convert them into a lead.

If you need help at all or have any questions about developing an online marketing strategy for your business website and want to turn your website into a referral engine, feel free to call Web Unlimited toll free at 1-888-516-0172 or email sales@webunlimited.com.

Be sure to go to bookmark our Web Unlimited YouTube Channel.

SEO 101-ep – Here is the Powerpoint that goes along with this video series.

So with no furthr explanation, here are the videos:

SEO 101 Introduction

SEO 101 – Benefits of SEO

SEO 101 – How NOT to Get Ranked (1)

SEO 101 – How NOT to Get Ranked (2)

SEO 101 – How TO Get Ranked (1)

SEO 101 – How TO Get Ranked (2)

SEO 101 – How TO Get Ranked (3)

Enjoy and be sure to ask questions in the comments section!! Many more videos to follow!