Online Marketing Articles by Web Profits

How to Target a Niche Audience

If you’re trying to sell something online it would make sense to target as many people as possible in the hope of making lots of sales, right?

Actually no – nothing could be further from the truth.  Your best bet is to target a much smaller group of people with an offer which is specifically tailored to meet their needs.

Consider this.  If you had a new golf club you wanted to sell, you would go and find someone who plays golf to see if they wanted to buy it.  You wouldn’t try and sell it to just anyone, and exactly the same principle applies online.

The good news is that niche markets are smaller, easier to target and generally present much less in the way of competition.  If you can target a niche audience in the right way you’ll have a much better chance of making some significant sales than if you try and reach out to anyone and everyone.

But in order to make those sales you need to make sure your site is found by the people who want to buy what you have to offer.  To do this it’s very important that you have the right kind of content on your site.

Include plenty of useful information that will appeal to those people, and make sure it is rich in relevant keywords.  So if your site sells rare golf clubs, you could write an article on the benefits of using rare golf clubs, making sure that term is used several times throughout the piece.  By using longer key phrases you will stand a much better chance of being found when people search for information on your subject area in the search engines.

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Google Universal Search

Big changes are happening at Google. If you regularly use the Google search engine you will soon be affected by these changes – although there’s a chance you may not even notice them to begin with, as they will be in the form of links in the blue bar which appears along the top of the search results page.

Put simply, the Google Universal Search is Google’s answer to making their search engine more comprehensive and more useful when it delivers results to your search query. Depending on what you search for, you may have links to the web, to book results, to images, and even video images that are relevant to your search term(s).

The links you see in that blue bar will depend on the nature of your search. A TV program or movie might have images or video options included, while searching for a breaking news event would have the web, news and possibly images as part of the results.

This is packed with potential for website owners, as it gives you further possibilities for marketing your website. If you haven’t yet delved into the marketing advantages of making short instructional videos, for example, now might be the time to start.

For example, you could make a video that is relevant to the content on your website, and distribute it for free via a site such as YouTube. If you take time to create a good description of the video (packed with relevant keywords of course…) you can eventually expect to get the video indexed by Google, and there is every chance you will then appear in the Universal Search results once it rolls out worldwide.

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Tips For Using Social Networking Sites To Market Your Website

The possibilities that sites such as Squidoo, Facebook and MySpace offer are huge for savvy online marketers. They allow you to introduce your business to a whole new group of people, provided you use them correctly.

It all starts with your profile. This should tell the world about you and your business, and provide an essential link to your website. The beauty of social networking sites is that they allow you to introduce yourself to the world, rather than just your business, so make the most of your profile and add valuable content which gives real value to any passing visitors. If you can attract people with interests similar to those of you and your business, the traffic to your website is likely to increase as a result.

Allocate some time in your schedule to visit the profiles and pages that belong to other members of these sites. Leave comments wherever you can, but remember to be polite and respectful – people can always trace you back to your networking page and be equally negative about you. That won’t help your business at all.

The main aim of this networking exercise is to get people to return the favor and visit your profile or website. As you start to receive more comments and backlinks in this way, your profile will start to appear in search engine results – which will lead to even more traffic.

Many social networking sites have a plethora of groups you can join to raise your profile even higher. Joining a group which has a specific interest means you will be effectively plugging your business into a market which you know will be interested in what you have to offer. Make the most of it, and join as many relevant groups as you can.

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8 Ways To Reach Key Markets When Advertising Online

When it comes to promoting your business, there are countless ways to make sure people know you are there. Using as many of these as possible ensures you reach the biggest audience and enjoy the best results – all of which means bigger profits for you.

PAY-PER-CLICK ADVERTISING

Set your budget, bid on keywords related to your business, and pay only when someone actually clicks on your advert. Be careful not to get drawn into a bidding war over specific keywords – it’s the quickest way to blow your advertising budget.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

This is the term given to a range of techniques you can apply to your website in order to make it more appealing to search engines, and in turn rank higher in search results.

Perhaps the easiest way to make your site content SEO friendly is to make sure you include plenty of relevant keywords in your text. Other methods include linking to other similar sites and updating your site frequently to help attract the search engine spiders that will rank your site.

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Are Internet Sales Letters Dead?

We’ve all come across the long sales letters online that take a good ten minutes to read before we get to the price of the item being promoted. But do they still work?

Perhaps it’s not so much the length of the sales letter that matters; it’s what you put in it. We can’t talk to a salesperson and ask them questions online, so the sales letter has to answer all the questions we may have about the product or service and remove all the barriers to buying it. Short sales letters simply don’t have the room to convey all the necessary information that would persuade someone to buy the product being promoted. This is especially true with information products, which need to prove they are different from the wealth of competition they are up against.

So is there any limit on how long a sales letter should be? In essence, it needs to be long enough to get its message across and convince the customer they need to buy the product. If it needs seventeen pages to do that effectively, then not a word has been wasted. The key is in drawing in the reader and presenting a series of arguments that explain why the product will improve their lives.

Recent times have seen another advance in the world of internet sales letters – and that’s the introduction of internet video. Marketers have latched onto the potential of video as a way to promote their products; not to mention make themselves more accessible to the buying public.

A short video can be promoted by itself, but it’s possible to include a link to the video at the top of the sales letter as well. This gives the buyer a choice of whether to find out about the product via the video, or by reading the more traditional sales letter. Some people will use both options, which can further enforce your sales message and lead to more sales.

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What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search Engine Marketing is the process of driving traffic to a website using the search engines.

When talking about search engine marketing you’re really only talking about two methods of driving traffic::

1. Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC)
2. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Most businesses go wrong when they make a decision to do one or the other… when in actual fact it is far better to use both PPC and SEO is conjuction with one another.

How?

The first step in a sound search engine marketing strategy is setting up a PPC campaign… this is done because a business can start driving traffic for any relevant keyword in less than 24 hours.

Now this is the most important part…

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Get Your Own Google Search Engine

Google has recently released Google Co-op, a customisable Google search engine any business can use to generate additional profits.

How does it work?

You simply visit the Google Co-op site, follow the simple prompts and Google will provide you with your very own customised Google search engine.

What can you customise?

You can:

- Place a search box and search results on your website
- Specify or prioritize the sites you want to include in searches
- Customize the look and feel to match your website
- Invite your community to contribute to the search engine

You can then send your traffic, clients or anybody else you want to the search engine.

How can you profit?

Like Google Adsense you earn a percentage of the revenues Google makes as a result of user clicking on the sponsored links.

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Yahoo Launches New Blog

Yahoo! has launched its new search marketing blog which it will use to communicate updates, changes and advice on its Sponsored Search and other marketing products.

It’s a great resource for anybody wanting to stay up-to-date with the latest changes at Yahoo! and essential for all search engine marketing specialists.

How Will Google Book Search Affect Online Marketing?

Google has recently launched a service called Google Book Search, where you will be able to search through all the pages in every single book listed in the Google Library.

Launched in 2002, the aim of Google Book Search is to scan or upload every single book in the world and make it searchable using their proprietary search technology. Current partnerships with Harvard, the University of Michigan, the New York Library, Oxford and Stanford give Google access to more than 15,000,000 volumes.

In Google’s words…

“What’s the goal of this project?

The Library Project’s aim is simple: make it easier for people to find relevant books – specifically books they wouldn’t find any other way such as those that are out of print – while carefully respecting authors’ and publishers’ copyrights. Our ultimate goal is to work with publishers and libraries to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalog of all books in all languages that helps users discover new books and publishers discover new readers.”

Google also has a Partner Program, an online book marketing program, where publishers can upload their books to the Google Library and have them appear when Internet users search particular topics.

How does Google Book Search work?

It’s a simple 3 step process:
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