It doesn’t matter if running an eBiz is old hat for you or if you’re just getting started: advertising is always going to be a key element of your business strategy. Search engine marketing is probably the biggest tool you have available for promoting your web store, so you need to stay on top of the trends in that area to be competitive. 1. Blogging for Profit One of the hottest trends on the internet right now is blogging. What started as informal personal journaling has become a great way to boost your website’s traffic. Adding a blog to your website gives it a personal face, thereby increasing the quality of your site and giving your customers a reason to come back. If your eBiz specializes in chocolates, you can blog your favorite recipe for chocolate fudge brownies or an article highlighting the benefits of eating chocolate. Blogging about topics related to the product or service you offer is also a way to get ahead in search engines’ natural listings. And there are several reasons for that: • You’re constantly adding fresh, relevant content which is exactly what search engines are looking for. • You’re constantly adding keywords in those blogs. • Blogs are getting preference in search engine rankings right now. This is especially true of Google—even more so if you use Google’s blogging service, http://blogger.com. 2. Results You Can See Internet marketing expert Derek Gehl, of http://marketingtips.com, shares how an increased demand for trackable results in paid advertising in the last few years is working to your advantage.
When you run a pay per click advertising campaign, search engine companies actually give you the tools to monitor the visitors each keyword brings to your site. Gehl recommends running a keyword campaign to track which keywords bring in sales conversions as opposed to those that only bring in traffic. According to Gehl, it’s a good idea to “start with…anywhere from 250 to 500 keywords and keyphrases targeted to your specific market…That’s considered a good test.” Don’t bid too much; you can still get a lot of words for 10 and 15 cents. From there, you can gauge what direction will be the most advantageous for you to take. 3. You’ve Got Mail—Running a Smart Email Campaign If your business has conducted any email campaigns of late, you have probably been affected by the new changes in spamming laws. The recent crackdown on spammers has made it increasingly difficult for legitimate business’ mailers to reach their customers’ inboxes. But what most eBiz owners don’t know is that the big email service providers (Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc.) have what are called “white lists.” Gehl counsels, “If you go to those websites, if you’re a legitimate email marketer, you can go through a process with each of those websites to get white listed. And once you’re on that white list your email automatically goes to that inbox.”