Marketing is the lifeblood of any business so it's in your best interest to become a student of web marketing. Because 85% of most traffic comes from search engines like Google, the most common form of marketing is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). But there are a ton of other ways to advertise such as blogs, online classifieds, message boards, article submission, joint ventures, etc.
Be advised that there are many so called internet marketing experts out there each with their own gimmick. All these people do is offer you worthless crap and do nothing other than send you "special offers" at least weekly on the next greatest "recommendation" for you to buy (of course they get a commission). But here are some very reputable companies offers very good quality marketing advice.
Internet Marketing Center
(IMC)
IMC offers many products on internet marketing. These guys have been around since the beginning and they offer solid advice. They have a lot of products but I'm going to recommend only the ones that I feel will be a great help to you. The rest of them are nice to have but definitely not essential.
The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on The Internet
This is their flagship product and will form the foundation of any education relating to web marketing.
Internet Entrepreneur Club (IEC)
The IEC is a membership gives you access to a private forum where you can get advice directly from the IMC staff about anything from choosing a product to marketing it. This is very helpful to get you going. The way it works is you ask unlimited questions via the forum and a staff member will respond to you directly. Since it's a forum other members can also respond which is always nice. If you click on the above link you can get a trial membership for only $2.95 for 30 days.
Search Marketing Lab
This is also a membership that focuses solely on search engine optimization. Similar to IEC you ask questions but in this forum the questions are specifically tailored around getting top placement in the major search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo!, etc.). By using the above link you'll also get a free trial membership for 30 days.
Wordtracker
Wordtracker is one of the best services to do keyword research. They offer a free trial as well as "Wordtracker Academy" which offers great training on keyword research.
WebCEO
This is a software program that helps you submit your site to search engines as well as monitor your search engine activites. They have a free version which doesn't expire and will let you submit your site to search engines. When you're on the site just click the "Download" link and you'll be able to get the free version. If you want to really learn about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) they also offer detailed training complete with a certification program.
Ad Watcher
Ad Watcher is a way to track all of your marketing campaigns. What they do is give you an website address to use in your advertising. When a user clicks on that address the details are logged and they are immediately forwarded to your website. This way you'll know what's working and what isn't by how many clicks to conversions you've been getting for any campaign you feel like running.
Google Analytics
It's really important to know how your visitors are interacting with your site. And to understand this you'll need some sort of analytic software. Most web hosts give analytic software with your account but it's mediocre at best.
Google Analytics is one of the best traffic analysis programs on the market. You not only get to see how many visitors are on your site but you can see really nice reports, exit pages, amount of time spent on your site, referring websites, etc. There's a lot you can do with Google Analytics and what's even better is that it's 100% free.
If you need help setting this up and updating your webpages with the necessary code just contact me and I'll be glad to help you out.
Search Engine Submission
Most hosts offer a simple way to submit your site to the search engines but if they don't you can use this free service from EverSoft.
When you submit your site you need to enter your email address. I highly recommend that you get a separate email account from a service like Gmail to manage all your search engine submissions. |
