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Starting an online shop - Part 5 - Marketing

Marketing and building traffic to your online shop

Marketing is one of the most complex and time consuming parts of running any business. This is definitely true when your business is an online store! Many different opinions exist as to the best strategies, so all we can do here is give you some ideas.

We believe SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) are vital parts of the successful marketing of your online shop, and although some elements are best handled by those with professional experience, there is a lot you can do yourself. If you are unsure as to the meanings of these terms, you should read our article - "What is SEO?"

Below we describe three key areas of online marketing, although this list is by no means complete!

1. Paying for Advertising

Online advertising which is paid for can be roughly divided into two categories - advertising systems (such as Google Adwords) and 'everything else'!

The various systems available tend to work either on a pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-per-impression (view) basis, and although they can be very powerful tools in certain circumstances, we discourage their use on a continued basis - if you are reliant on these systems to bring in the majority of your traffic, then you should take a good look at the state of your 'onsite SEO' and other elements of your online marketing.

Be sure that you read the google guidelines on paid-for links. These can be summarised by saying that advertisements which you pay for online should be aimed at people - not at search engines. In other words, buying a banner (or other graphical) advert on a related site is fine, but paying someone to add you to a list of links which they maintain on their page is not - nor is it a very efficient use of your money.

Decide on a budget for paid-for advertising per month and stick to it - to begin with this may even be nothing; later on it might be a percentage of the profits from your online shop. Many advertisements will require a relatively small monthly payment, and you should avoid the temptation to exceed your budget because you believe an advert will pay for itself over time - there is plenty you can do without committing to regular payments!

2. Link Building / Offsite SEO

The process of link building (which, broadly, is also called 'offsite SEO') can be simply described, although in order to achieve the best results, a far more detailed understanding is necessary.

At the simplest level, it is the process of (by any means) obtaining links which point to your website. It is possible to group these 'inbound links' in many ways, but we suggest organising them into three main groups initially, which are listed here in their approximate order of value.

One-way inbound links - links from another website to yours, where you are not obliged to link back

Reciprocal links - links from another website to yours, where you maintain a link back

Online Directory links - links created in online directories. Regardless of the directory, these are of lower 'technical' value in terms of SEO. However, you should remember that ultimately it is traffic you want - so a directory link which attracts lots of human attention is very valuable.

Often links will be created with the name of your site or it's URL as the anchor text (the text which is clicked to trigger the link). Ideally you want to try and ensure two things when acquiring links:

a) That not all of them go directly to your 'main' URL. Maintain other pages which are also linked to - this is generally referred to as deep-linking.

b) That the anchor text varies from link to link and incorporates keywords which will help to promote your site in search engines, or which are likely to attract the attention of readers, resulting in a visit.

A vital part of determining the keywords to use when considering search engine optimisation is "keyword research". This is a vast topic in it's own right, and we will do no more than mention it here, although we will return to it in future articles.

3. Social Networking

Another form of list building, which can be very effective, is to use the various social networking sites and applications available. These can serve as a good mechanism to advertise your site, although generally the effect of sending out a message is to trigger a fairly rapid response - a short term 'burst' of traffic - rather than a long term increase.

Accordingly, they can be valuable for helping to spread news, press releases and new product announcements, but are not always valuable for long term traffic building.

Consider setting up a fan page on Facebook or similar sites (also a discussion group, if you feel your customers would use it) - but remember that any content generated on these sites belongs to them, not you, and in the long term, they benefit most from it!

Twitter is very powerful, if you can attract a good following - we will be touching on ways to build customer lists via social networking channels in the future.

Conclusion

When marketing your website, building links and using other methods to drive traffic to your online shop, remember, search engine results (SERPS) are just one element - SEO is not the be all and end all. It's people (viewers) who generate the traffic by visiting your site, and a well placed advert or clever use of social networking can be very effective, too.

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