How do you promote a web site for a company that has an
extremely limited buying group? Sure, most of the companies on
the Internet today sell one small product or service, which is
searched for by thousands, if not millions of people every day.
But, if your company is like ours, you don't have a lot of
people searching for your product. Or your competitor's product!
Our company is in the high voltage capacitor business. There
just aren't a lot of uses for our product in today's "smaller,
faster, cheaper" world. What does all of this mean? It means
that I have to work twice as hard as most web developers or
promoters to get hits to our site. If your company is like our
company, then you will want to follow the experience driven
methods I have listed below.
1. Links, links, links. I can't say enough about getting sites
to link to yours. It is a very simple method, but it takes time
and it WORKS! In my case, I have simply searched for companies
that would require one of our parts. I then write to them and
let them know that we would be interested in a link to their
site. Nine out of ten times, they link to us without ever asking
for a reciprocal link! Most search engines today take into
account the number of other sites that link to your site. They
assume that if other companies are linked to you, that your site
must be good. Another approach is to search for links to your
competitor's page. Go to the sites that come up, and ask them to
link to your site as well. You will be amazed at the number of
web sites that are simply devoted to linking to other pages! To
search for links to a page, try using AltaVista or HotBot. As an
example, type in the following: link:www.yahoo.com You will be
amazed at the results! Of course, after you request links to
pages, you will have to wait until the search engines have
indexed again before they know that you are now linked to other
sites. Search Engines index on a rate from every two weeks to
ever six months.
2. Meta tags. You MUST make sure that you have your Meta tags
generated properly. This has been covered by Web Pro News an
infinite amount of time, and it is just as important as
registering your own domain name. Without Meta tags, most search
engines will just pass over you. For a brief explanation on
Search Engines and for a free Meta tag evaluation, visit
Northern Webs at http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html
3. Text Only versions of your site. If your page is available to
other countries, as our is, it is a good idea to have a text
only version of your site. Why? Because most of the people who
are not located in the United States do not have the Internet
connection speeds that we here in the US take for granted. Most
of these people also have older computers with slower processors
and low graphics capability. It has to be annoying for people in
foreign countries to go to a site that has a product that they
need, only to find out that they can't read the fancy Flash
programming. I do not currently have this text only version, but
I am working on it as we speak. So, to all of you in foreign
countries, I have listened to your requests, and I am taking
action!
4. New Killer Content. Sure, you can have two thousand pages on
your site. But, if someone has read them all, why would they
come back? You have to continuously update your page and add new
killer content. I suggest a weekly column or monthly bulletin.
You just need something to keep the visitors interested in book
marking your site for future viewing.
If you really want to gain visitors, then you will. When I
started our site, we had 25 visitors a day. Now, we have had
100,000 NEW visitors in the past three months. We now have a 50%
return visitor rate. In our industry, that is good. For our
business, it is working phenomenally! The last bit of advice I
can offer is to continually read the Web Pro News daily! It
offers intelligent and cutting edge information, which will help
your web site grow exponentially.
About the author:
Chad Hall Custom Electronics, Inc. Webmaster Jr. Design Engineer
Manufacturing Engineer CAD Systems Coordinator URL:
http://www.customelec.com E-mail: webmaster@customelec.com
Phone: 1-877-RELY CEI Fax: 607-432-3913
