| Internet Marketing - The Beginning | |
| Very few businesses can operate to their peak potential without an Internet presence of some type. Every small business should have an Internet presence that, at a minimum, defines their company, presents a digest of their product or service and makes available their contact information. In the marketing and sales environment today, a company without web site is quickly becoming the exception. | |
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| Okay, you have spent a reasonable amount of time, and probably money, for a professionally designed Web site for your company; your navigation structure is consistent and logical, your content is relevant and current; everything works as expected and you're satisfied. You've heard that being listed with search engines and directories is important and you know there are companies out there that will submit your site to the majority of the search engines and directories on the planet for $100 or so. You'll just pay them once and presto --- your site visitor statistics, customer satisfaction and profits go through the roof! | |
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| Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. The majority of these companies will do what you pay for ... submit your site and your email address to hundreds or thousands of "search engines". There are three problems with this: | |
| 1 | The vast majority of these "search engines" and "directories" are nothing more than thinly disguised email collection databases. Sometimes these companies will actually add your site to their database, as though it would do some good. As a general rule, these companies collect web site and email addresses and either sell or lease their lists to other companies. Almost immediately you will begin to receive unwanted email. Sometimes it can even reach the SPAM level. |
| 2 | It does not matter how many search engines / directories you submit your web site to if your site isn’t optimized for at least one of the major search engines and directories. Either you will be ignored all together or placed at the end of their listings. Any increase in your site visitation is accidental and will definitely be short-lived. |
| 3 | Some search engines consider several of the automatic submission services as generators of SPAM and will totally ignore any of their submissions or, in a worst case scenario, they may ban your site from their database all together. |
| So what is a small business person to do? I hope you will return here for these tips! This is where you will learn Internet Marketing 101. This is just the basics ... good ideas for most small business sites. These are generally accepted Internet Marketing methods that apply to the majority of small business web sites; there will always be special cases where use of these methods may not be appropriate or the results desired. | |
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