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E-Marketing Articles Five Common Web Marketing Myths ExposedMyth #1: Build it and they will come Traffic
is everything. As thousands of
webmasters have already learned, you can have a catchy domain name and an
impeccably designed website already on the web.
You can even have it indexed by the search engines. However,
even after all that, a website may only get a handful of visitors a day.
After a few weeks of launching a website, you may catch up to the fact
that getting people to your site takes a lot more hard work than you expected.
It will take many different approaches to make your website known, and
you’ll have to pull all the stops: list
your website in the major directories, have it crawled by the search engines,
create a signature file for your emails, publish a free newsletter, exchange
links, stamp your domain name in your business cards, stationary, and
promotional material, advertise in traditional media, etc.
But above all, it will take time, sometimes months or even years, before
you’re able to get significant traffic to your website, so prepare to be
patient and don’t give up. Myth #2:
We guarantee top placement with the search engines When it
comes to search engines, nobody can guarantee anything.
The task of search engine optimization is a lot like trying to predict
the stock market. Just as no
stockbroker can guarantee you a 100% return on your money (if he can, how come
he still has to work?), no search engine optimization “expert” can guarantee
you a top placement. Maybe he can
position your website in a top spot for keywords that nobody uses, but that
wouldn’t be of any help, would it? All
you can do to try to score big with the search engines is to follow some basic
guidelines, like putting your preferred keywords in your page title, repeat them
often in your web page copy, and creating a site map link near the top of the
page so that the search engine can crawl all your pages.
Other than basic things like that, the only other strategy that can
significantly improve your ranking is to get a lot of links to your site from
authoritative pages related to your topic.
That means more hard and time-consuming work, but you can only take out
what you put in, don’t you? So,
if you want good results, stop listening to the hype-meisters and get to work. Myth #3:
Make money while you sleep
How many
times have you heard this?: “sign
up for these affiliate programs and your website will turn into a lean, mean,
cash machine: you’ll be making money in your pajamas”.
Yeah, right. First of all,
affiliate commissions are usually so small that the average affiliate will only
rake in ten or twenty bucks a month. After
all, what makes you think that people who see the same links in thousands of
other pages are going to decide to make a purchase from your site?
The only way to make significant money is with a fairly unique product
that not a lot of sites sell. You
may need to invest time and money to research your target market, find and get
the rights to distribute a profitable product, and then work hard to promote it.
If you just want to run a couple of affiliate links at your site,
that’s OK, but don’t quit your day job just yet.
For
years, we have heard web marketing gurus tell us that we just have to publish a
free ezine or newsletter, collect our visitors’ emails and laugh all the way
to the bank. This probably
originated years ago, when web advertising was all the rage, and all we needed
to do to sell ad space was to get a few thousand subscribers.
Nowadays, even sites with hundreds of thousands of visitors can’t rely
on advertising revenue for survival. Most
ezines nowadays don’t even reach 1,000 subscribers, and most of them won’t
be interested in your offers. It
won’t take long for you to realize that to sell something to your subscribers,
first you have to establish an almost personal relationship with them.
They will have to know you very well, and feel very comfortable with you
before they will be ready to purchase anything.
You will need to post your picture on your website, give lots of
testimonials, get positive press coverage from important media outlets, have a
physical address (not just an email address), and, if possible, conduct seminars
so that your subscribers can get to know you in person.
Again, a lot of hard and time-consuming work, but if you want the big
payoff there is no other way.
Most
people that look for freebies, and receive freebies, will always expect
freebies. It is extremely hard to
turn freeloaders into paying customers, especially on the web, where almost
everything is free. Instead of
putting a lot of emphasis on your free gifts, use your web space to explain
very, very well your product or service. Try
to anticipate all your customer’s needs, answer all their questions, point out
all your benefits, and, after that, include a short contact form so that
interested parties can contact you. The
time you spend following up with those prospects will give you much better
results than if you just rely on showering a large pool of unqualified prospects
with free gifts and see what trickles down.
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