How can I get people to revisit my website?

To get people to keep coming back to your website, you need to give plenty of reasons why they should.  If you think about it, it's just common sense.  You wouldn't keep going to a shop every day if nothing had changed each time that you went.  You need to continually add to your site in a variety of different ways.  Add new blog posts/articles, tutorials, videos, pictures, interviews, competitions, news, events, etc.  Doing this regularly gives people an excuse to click on your site and catch up with what's new.  Not only that, but it shows to new visitors that your site is not dead, there is an active presence online. 

When just starting out with a brand new website, you should have an almost endless list of things that you need to add, so you have got more than enough to get you started.  A lot of people think that they need to add everything at once before publishing their site, when actually a single blog post is a great way of starting.  As long as you build upon that on a regular basis, then that is enough reason for people to revisit your website.

Techniques to bring traffic back to your website

Apart from regularly adding content, there are a number of other ways to encourage people to come back to your site.

Email Marketing!

 

This is a great way of getting people back to your website.  The key is to build a large email list of your customers/visitors.  When people register to become a member, you get their email address.  When people sign up to your weekly newsletter, you get their email address.  The more ways there are to get someone's email address the better.

With an email list, you can build a brand, recommend products, promote any events/workshops that you may be holding and more importantly to can encourage people to keep returning to your website. 

Just don't go overboard with emails so that they are viewed as spam!  Nobody likes spam! 

Newsletter!

 

These are a great way to encourage people to return to your website.  Within your newsletter you can keep referring people back to your website.  You can automate the whole process as well, letting it run on auto pilot. 

 

 

RSS Feeds!

 

These are great for informing people about your latest updates.  Feeds update themselves automatically when you add to your blog.  People that have chosen to subscribe to your RSS Feed are automatically told about your new content, giving them incentive to check it out. 

 

These are so easy to set up and do everything automatically for you.  Google Feedburner is a great tool to use to do this.  This is something that you should definitely include on your website.

 

 

Be Friendly!

 

If someone takes the time to email you with a question, then put the effort into replying.  Even if you don't know the answer to the question asked, perhaps you could refer them to somebody that does, or be honest and say I don't know!  The fact that you have shown to actively respond to a visitors question can go along way.

If you are getting lots of emails about the same question, then that might be a good subject to write about in an upcoming blog post.  You could send emails back thanking the individual for the question and stating that you will be writing an in depth post outlining the answer for him.

Post comments on your own posts answering peoples questions, refer to people that have asked questions in videos, etc.  This all helps to build a community around your website.  Doing this sort of thing shows to your visitors that you aren't a faceless website that doesn't interact with its viewers, that you are willing to help if you can.

Network!

 

Get in contact with other people that are involved in your field of interest.  You may not get too many replies if you still have a small reputation, but that will change as you grow your online status.  You could offer to link to their website in return that they similarly link back to you. This can help your credibility and increase your reputation.

As the saying goes, "It's not what you know, it's who you know that matters!" 

Homework!!!

These are just some ways to get people to come back to your website.  Again, this is something that you have to continually work on, it won't just happen over night.  Get in the habit of adding articles/blog posts every few days, regularly tweeting, posting things on your social media sites, running competitions, making videos, etc. If you continually produce reasons for people to return to your site, then they will.

More Customers with Email Marketing !

Whether you're a seasoned graphic designer or a marketer branching out into design, there's one thing you need to know: designing effective HTML email marketing has its own unique set of challenges. Are you ready to overcome those challenges? Does your design have what it takes to compel recipients to take action? Are you sure your email design includes all of the latest best practices?

When it comes to effective email design, there are three things you always need to keep in mind, whether you're creating an e-newsletter for your entire list or a sales-focused mailing to a select group of customers and prospects: the basics, the best practices, and the pitfalls. Let's take a look at each of these three categories and explore how each one can have an impact on your overall email design. Ask yourself each of these questions to ensure that your design makes the grade.

Checklist One: The Basics 

 

Did You Create Two Versions?

When scheduling the design time for your email marketing campaign, always plan to create at least two separate versions of your email - one in HTML and another in plain text. Why? Because if you only provide an HTML email, any subscribers whose email clients are set up only to handle text messages will display a jumble of text, odd characters and HTML code. You may also want to consider developing a third version in Rich Text Format (RTF) to take advantage of those email clients that do not render HTML but that are capable of presenting rich text.

Did You Design for the Top 5 Email Clients?
Keep in mind that your email design doesn't just need to look good in the email client you use; it needs to render properly in the most common email programs used today. According to a MarketingSherpa 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, nearly 80% of email users use one of the following five email clients:

• Microsoft Outlook (MarketingSherpa's Report notes that 4 out of 10 email users open email in some version of Outlook)
• Gmail
• AOL mail 
• Yahoo! Email
• Hotmail 
   
   
  If possible, test email in more than one version of an email program - see how it renders differently in Microsoft Outlook 2010 compared to Microsoft Outlook 2007 - and also see how it appears in the same email programs on different computing platforms, like Macs and Linux computers or even the iPad.
   
  Did You Include a Link to a Web Version? Even though you test for a number of different email clients, you probably have at least one subscriber using a non-standard program - or perhaps you have a growing number of subscribers accessing their email from smartphones or other mobile devices. That's why it's important to include a link in your email to a Web-based version of your email message. Doing this will ensure that all subscribers can access the information as you intended even if the email they received didn't render properly.
  
  Did You Use the Right Page Dimensions?
  When designing for the standard email client, page width should be top-of-mind; after all, forcing readers to scroll horizontally isn't exactly their favorite thing to do. To stay on the safe side, ensure that your email designs are between 500 and 650 pixels in width. And don't assume that readers will scroll down a long page of content either - make use of landing pages to explain offers and benefits in more detail.
  Did You Consider the Right File Size?
  Page pixel width isn't the only number with which you should be concerned - you also need to ensure your message is the appropriate file size. Because some recipients may have file size limits within their email client, a good rule of thumb is to keep your message sizes to between 40 - 50 KB to avoid potential issues.
  
  Did You Use Color to Your Advantage?
  No one can deny the role that color can play in effective email design. Done well, color can highlight a call to action and draw the reader's eye to the email's most valuable information. Done poorly, color can confuse the reader, causing them to overlook important elements of your email - if they even read it at all.
  
  Make color work for you. Ensure that the background colors, font colors and the colors of any buttons or images in your email complement each other and work well together. Experiment with color combinations until you find one that effectively calls out important information while staying true to your brand. And avoid any color combinations that may negatively affect readability.
  

  Checklist Two: The Best Practices

  Did You Follow W3C standards for HTML coding?
  The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed standards related to HTML coding. Abiding by these standards ensures that your HTML email marketing will be accessible to all recipients, including those with special needs.
  
  Did You Use Standard Fonts?
  No one enjoys squinting to read a tiny font, and even non-designers know how distracting it can be to try reading something printed in a font like Comic Sans or Impact. Help your readers more quickly and easily access your email's valuable information by using a standard, universally-supported font that is at least 10 pixels, 10 points, or size "2". Examples of fonts that are universally supported are Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana and Tahoma.
  
  Did You Employ Appropriate Graphics and Buttons?
  Images and buttons are an excellent way to add visual interest to your email, to break up or offset blocks of text, and to draw reader's attention to a specific area. Using graphics and buttons are an effective way of highlighting your email's call to action and compelling people to take action. Ensure that your graphics enhance your email rather than detract from it, and ensure that your call to action is the graphic that most gets your attention.
  
  Did You Use Image ALT Tags?
  Two-thirds of respondents in MarketingSherpa's 2009 report have their email images turned off by default. That means that all of the hard work you've put into the design of your HTML email may not ever be seen by email recipients. Email that arrives with blocked images oftentimes looks like a puzzle full of blank boxes with red Xs in the corners. Using ALT tags can help your email content better communicate with those whose images are blocked.
  
  An ALT tag is a written out "ALTernative" to what is depicted in the image. Make use of ALT tags to describe your offers, and to spell out your call to action. If your large email image shows several cozy winter sweaters on sale, ALT tag text of “Cozy winter jerseys - in wool, angora and cashmere - are available in a variety of colors from R19.99!” may just be enough to entice the recipient to turn images "on" or click through to the Web version of the email.
  
  Did You Include Plenty of Links? 
  
  Another method to increase your email open and clickthrough rates is by increasing the number of links within the email content. Why? Apparently a higher number of text, image, and navigation links appeals to the consumer because it signals to them that there are more ideas and actions available in the email.
  
   Need help with email marketing? Let the experts take care of your email marketing needs. Contact Scream Media today on 021 559 0800

How to promote new content on your website

You now have a finished piece of content on your website. How can one go about getting the most visitors to the new piece? Having faith that users will magically gravitate to your new page is extremely optimistic. The following contains 5 actionable tips for marketing your website content.
Pretend it’s for Print
It all starts with the quality of your content. Treat the piece that your writing as if it’s not easily changed after you’ve put it out there. Publishing content on the web has made us all a bit lazy with this. Knowing that we can just go back to fix or tidy up after the fact puts a little less pressure on us to produce perfect content. Remember that people are taking time out of their lives to focus their attention on you. Make it worthwhile.
A Dash of SEO with that Please
After you’re happy with the content take a once over for the search engines. Don’t bastardize it. But if you want to get the most long term exposure for your content try to align your web page’s message with your website’s search engine optimization strategy.
You could adjust:
-Your page title and meta description. Remember that these are the only two elements that search engine users see on search results pages. Try to have it read like a newspaper headline.
-The name of your post. If you can have good keywords here by all means do so.
-The permalink. Adjust your URL to be relevant to your content, keep it void of unnecessary words like “and, the, or” and include keywords.
-Your on-page headlines and actual copy. Skim through all of this for keyword opportunities that will ADD to the quality of your piece.
Just make sure that you are covering your bases seo-wise. If you set up your page properly you will give your writing every chance possible to be picked up by search engines down the road.
Remember Email Marketing?
If you’ve built an email list over the years then send out a quick campaign about the article. I wouldn’t suggest that you copy all of your post content into the email. I would use the email as a teaser. Give the email recipients reason to visit your website and read it there. My reasoning for this is that there are many more viral opportunities if the content is digested on your website vs in the email itself. Be sure to give enough useful information in the email itself though. This way if they don’t click through they wont feel their time has been wasted.
Feed the Birds
After you’ve done this go share your post on your favorite Social Media Channels like Facebook and Twitter. Be careful not to sound too sales-like here. People can get easily turned off by this. Ask for reciprocal links in a non demanding way. Saying things like “The most brilliant post on widgets EVER!” will get you no-where fast. If a comment is left make it a priority to respond.
Make it Easy to Share
Be sure that you give your readers every chance possible to share your content with their tribe. This is where the real potential of Social Media Marketing begins to shine. Someone sharing your post with all of their community has just exponentially increased your articles reach. It’s free marketing! Most content management systems have ways to add this functionality to your posts and if you aren’t using a CMS it’s not hard to hand code.

Email Marketing - Measurable Result

The difference between marketing and advertising, is the ability to track results and measure your efforts.   And, for a business owner, this is a valuable ability. You see, when you measure your marketing efforts...  and then take the time to make the appropriate changes, you are going to see the results in the increased number of sales. So how can you measure your marketing efforts? Well, good tracking and measuring is going to take a combination of Internet know-how and automated, marketing systems. But, between the two,  you can easily track and measure: Lead sources Email open rates Email opt-in rates Email links User interactions Promotion responses And, of course your resulting sales! When you are able to SEE what is working,  your marketing will become more specific, targeted, and successful.  Even with a stellar marketing campaign, there is always room for improvement.  Measuring your results gives you the chance to keep getting better,  and bring in more and more sales. When uncertainty rules...  marketing campaigns are nothing more than a shot in the dark!  With the ability to measure, track, and tweak, you can become a marketing powerhouse and start adding more money to your bank account! At Scream Media we make use of one of Europe's leading email marketing platforms, Vertical Response provides tracking on all aspects of email marketing. Contact us today for a free no obligation quote.

The 2010 New Year Checklist for Your Business

Every year here at H2L Online Marketing we make it a point to come up with a list of 10 things you need to be thinking about in the new year. They may be related to marketing, or running your business overall, and they’re usually something we relate to things we have to do in our own business.
1. Use “Cause Marketing” – This is the year that you should identify your business with a worthy cause and either donate a percentage of profits to it or contribute to it in some way. And if profits or hard cash don’t fit, consider donating employee time. Then in your marketing campaigns, your marketing materials and sales pitches you should talk about what you’re doing and why it’s important to you. Your prospects and customers increasingly want to do business with a business that cares and has moral obligations, and they’re looking for you to let them know how you fit the bill.
2. Use Social Media with Email Marketing - Finally get your act together with social media this year. Start with Twitter and Facebook, dont forget as part of our SEO service we do this for you. Then set your goals on how many Twitter followers your business will get or how many Facebook fans you’ll attract. Make sure you tell your email marketing recipients to follow you when you send out a campaign. And don’t forget to post your links to your email campaigns in your Twitter account and Facebook pages and ask people to join your email list. All of these marketing vehicles work really well together and feed off of each other. 3. Think SEO – Make a point of checking your SEO ranking with EVERY piece of content you add to your site, Think position, think search when writing articles or content for your site. H2L offers content writing for SEO at a very affordable rate.
4. Make This the Year of Customer Service - People talk about companies that listen to them and that treat them well so you’ll want to go above and beyond with customer service this year. This is especially true since companies like Facebook and Twitter are taking off and becoming a platform for people to tell the world how they feel…about you. This might be the year you get your customer data all in one place so it’s easy to find a customer when they call. 
5. Cut Costs - Keep cutting costs because we’re still in the economic weeds. Look at your top spending categories and see if there’s money to be saved. Is your rent too high? If you’ve got a number of years left on it you might call your landlord and ask if you can renegotiate “stepped” payments. Ask for a discount this year and tell them in the future years you’re willing to pay at bit more per square foot. If you’re spending too much on shipping, start calling other providers to see if they’re competitive. Doing things like this in January will add up for the rest of the year and help you to profitability.
6. Listen to Your Customers - Listen and watch what your customers are saying about you. Sign up for Google Alerts with your company name as a keyword, but also with your competitor’s names so you can see what is being published about them as well. Sign up for a free TweetDeck account and do the same. You’ll see what people on Twitter are saying about your company, your competition and even your industry, up-to-the minute for an unlimited number of keywords. Then chime in to the conversation and address the issue or try to get a new customer. Word to the wise: make sure you’re transparent with who you are, you don’t want to “hide” as someone else, tell them you’re with your company and you want to help out or answer any questions.
7. Find New Customers, Inexpensively - Google is where people go these days to find businesses they’re looking for. So set up or build on your Google Adwords pay-per-click efforts. If you don’t know where to start with Google try our PPC service, we manage your account through our Google Professional account.
8. Build Your Email List - Offer your clients a free sign up on your site to your monthly newsletter.
9. Hire People Who Care – If you’re lucky enough to be hiring for your business, this should be the year where you have an ample choice of people who need to work to choose from, so it’s your pick. Make sure you select people who have the same passion as you do, and people that fit into your business culture like a glove. Make sure you ask the questions that count; you want someone who can handle situations, someone who can communicate and someone who you trust. Don’t settle for second best, your customers will notice.
10. Embrace Word of Mouth – At H2L Online Marketing over 50% of the people who sign up for our service hear about  us through “Word of Mouth” . In 2010 you’ll really need to take a good look at what you’re doing to spur word of mouth. As noted here, customer service is important, the quality of your product or service is important and the entire customer experience is important in order for word of mouth to start. 
2010 is poised to be a great year for growing your small business. Good luck with your venture, and remember we are here to help.

How to get quality Linkbacks

In mid 2007 Google began editing toolbar PageRank scores and rankings for many sites that were selling links. It is not legal to buy links, you need to earn them.

At the same time, more and more people are writing online. Setting up a blog only takes a few minutes. There are hundreds or thousands of people talking about every topic imaginable, so if you create something remarkable and capture the attention of a few thought leaders who like it, you are going to get links. But how do you create content that people will like?

Passion = Market Knowledge = Links

One of the easiest (and most effective) ways to predict a future and to predict what people like is to immerse yourself in your topic. If you are passionate about a topic, know more about it than anyone else, and openly share information, then eventually people will notice and link to you. If you know what people are interested in, rather than asking them to link to what you have, create something that they would be interested in linking at. Express your world view and your bias in a way that matches their world view.Become a Platform

Each of us is the most relevant thing in our own lives. It sounds selfish but it is true. If you promote other people they will be more likely to promote you. Popular bloggers search to see what people are saying about them. If you want someone's attention linking at them from a blog post on your site is an easy way to get them to notice you. The Web is a Social Network

Social interaction of any type leads to links.

    * Speak at a conference? Someone will likely blog about it.
    * Want to get thought leaders to promote your site? Create a community project or contest and ask them to participate. Or give out awards.
    * Lack the budget needed to go to conferences? Moderate forums, comment on related blogs, and build social relationships online.
    * Track hot news in your space and try to get out in front of important trends.
          o As an example, when Google did a big update that promoted some big brand websites we were one of the first websites to analyze it.
      

Be Credible

But for people to take you credibly you need to make sure your website adheres to good web credibility standards.

    * Is your domain name memorable?
    * Does your design complement your copy?
    * Is your content interesting and conceptually unique?
    * Does your site have an editorial component and voice, or is it a boring low-value thin product database?
    * Is your about page memorable?
    * Is your site easy to use and understand?
    * Do you have a brand people care about?

You do not need to "have it all" to get started, but the more credible you look the faster you will gain momentum.

Build on Your Success

Work to improve your site every day. Over the course of the year fixing or creating one thing a day will lead to a large advantage. Building up a leading market position can take years, but once you get at the top those years are the barrier to entry which prevent others from being able to replicate what you buit up.

How to ask for a link back

Below is an example of an email to send out, remember no one will link to a site with a lessor page rank then their own website.
Dear Sir / Madam
We came across your web site on Google and would very much like to exchange links with you. Swapping links  with similar themed and good quality web sites can help improve search engine positiopns and encourage mutual visitors to each web site.
If you would like to swap links with us, please add our link using the following information.
Title H2L Onlinemarketing
URL www.h2lonlinemarketing.co.za
Description: H2L Online Marketing is a Cape Town based Internet Marketing company, with over 15 years experience on the web. We offer a variety of Online Marketing services including Web Design, Logo Design, SEO(Search Engine Optimization), PPC(Pay Per Click Advertising), Email marketing, Web Hosting and bespoke Programming and Scripting. Please send us your own details in the same format and we would be delighted to add a link to your web site here:http://www.h2lonlinemarketing.co.za/links.php (page rank 3/10)

Many thanks for your time and we look forward to hearing from you.

Kind Regards

H2L Online Marketing - A Scream Media Company