7 Free Internet Marketing Tips Every Business Owner Should Know

Keeping up with all your competitors on the internet today can be very, very expensive. Websites can be expensive. Search Engine Optimisation is time consuming so expensive (ineffective seo is even more expensive). Google Adwords is expensive when you don’t know what you’re doing.

But you know, it’s never been CHEAPER to market your business worldwide.

If you run a business you’re smart enough to learn any of the following tips that will enable you to begin to market online effectively.

1. You Should Have An Open Source Website Content Management System

Basically, open source is free stuff. A content management system is simply a means by which non technical people can edit website content and even change your website design. If your website has a CMS, it will mean YOU can edit the content yourself, dialing out the web design company and so saving your business money. In years gone-by a good CMS costed THOUSANDS OF POUNDS. Now, you can get excellent content management systems for FREE.

There are a lot of Open Source CMS on the market today. Usually they are simple to set up (although you might need a bit of technical know-how) and easy to configure. A lot of them come with many kinds of templates that let you change the design of your site easily.

To add to that, you can easily add what are called extensions to your new cms that will add functionality to your site (like a forum, booking system or a poll).

To compete in Google today you need to be regularly adding good content to your site to attract visitors. A content managed website makes this easy and enjoyable and ultimately puts you back in control.

CMS - Try out: Joomla / Drupal / Wordpress
See some Joomla Extensions, a means by which you can turn your website into a very powerful web application supporting your business.
Hobo offers an open source cms configuration and set-up service called Arachnid (which you’ll need if your not willing to spend the weeks learning how to do it properly).

2. Google Local Business Centre

Yes! You can get to the top of Google - guaranteed! And for FREE (albeit in your local geographic area and based on the number of competitors already subscibed). You can also get free directions to your business. It only takes about 6 weeks to get listed above that pesky competitor who’s been there for the last 7 years! Try it out at Google Local Business Center before they do!

3. Google Analytics

Track your visitors for free. Find out where they come from and where on your site they go. You can even find out which exact keyword combination visitors typed into Google that lead you to get an email from your website. For most this is the only website statistics program you will ever need. And yes! It tracks everything, including visitors from Yahoo and MSN and other websites. Sometimes you get what what you pay for, and on some occasions, you actually get a lot more. Try Google Analytics FREE for yourself.


4. Google Domains / Google Apps

Share calendars. Send and receive emails. Store documents. All, again for free! If you have a small business then Google Domains (Apps) is an excellent, inexpensive method of manageing your email system and meetings calendar. In fact, it scales to be useful to almost any organisation big or small. We use it. It’s fabulous more free stuff from Google! Try it Free at Google Domains.

5. Get a Blog!

You’re website needs a blog! Yes, you might not know what this is - but everyone’s doing it (at least everone who is generating lots of visitors to their site!). A blog is ideal for your news section and lets anyone in your organisation easily add content to your site if necessary through a simple online interface. As mentioned, we use it for our news section and basically it lets you add fresh news content easily without any wwebsite expertise and to boot it allows you to, via blog techy stuff, instantly promote whatever article you’ve written worldwide to blog search engines everywhere.

We use Wordpress. It’s free, too, and probably the best! It takes minutes to install on your site and can be configured in about 4 hours to look and operate like the rest of your site (like ours). Download a copy at Wordpress for your site.

What? You don’t have a website? Then you can set up a free blog on Wordpress.com or Blogger (not ideal - but using this method you actually don’t need anything apart from an email address) . We actually have a couple of secondary blogs hosted here too.

When you have a blog why not check out our social network marketing tips for help on how to promote worldwide for free.

6. Organise Your Own Domains

Domains can be confusing. My advice? Set up an account with 123Reg and manage all your domains here. Just the domains, mind. Get the hosting elsewhere. Open an account for free and start adding domains (web addresses) you want to own (domains cost about £10 for 2 years depending on whether it is a .com or .co.uk etc. Then, organise hosting, but not through 123. Why not try out…..

7. Organise Your Own Hosting

Through Rochen, you can organise your domain/s through a plethora of packages. There are a bazillion hosts out there, a lot of them good. At the time of writing however I believe Rochen do not support .asp, which might be a problem for some.

However if you are following any (or all) of the advice on this page (ie open source CMS or blog using PHP/MySQL) then we recommend Rochen becuase at the moment at any rate customer support is stellar.

I also like the control panels and options you get with the account and reseller options are available.

Basically if you organise your own hosting and domains it really puts you in control. If you’re in control you call the shots with your web development company. It’s not a hard thing to learn how to do, either.

That’s it! A bonus one? Didn’t we give you enough for free?

OK…it is good blog etiquette after all!

Bonus Tip

You don’t have to pay to get into Google. All you need is a link from a site already in the index (ie already in the Google results pages). Get a link from a good site, though, and your site could be completely spidered in a week. Then you too could enjoy more free stuff from Google - traffic! Kiss goodbye to all those seo companies who say they will get you into Google for only £39.99! Sweet! All you need to do is leave a (secret) number of comments in this blog and avoid my spam filtering.
Source:http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/7-free-internet-marketing-tips-every-business-owner-should-know

Top Ten Small Business Web Site Marketing Tips

Many small business owners struggle with the seemingly overwhelming task of managing their web site. There always seems to be so much to do, yet no time to do it all (something we know all too well). This brief primer should help to highlight the key aspects of web site management that will help them gain the most from their web site with the time that they have available.

• The following ten tips are key to maintaining a successful web site. Follow these and your site will do better. Nothing will guarantee that a web site will be successful as there are simple too many different factors that impact web success - but as a general rule these ten tips will always lead to better performance.
• Content
• Freshness
• No Tricks
• Links
• Structure
• Accessibility
• Quality Code
• URLs
• Style
• Images

#1 Content

Content is keyAlmost all the search engines scan a sites content now - almost ignoring things like meta tags. The more content you have on your site the more the search engines can scan - but there is more to it then that: people like content too. Many people measure a web site's success by the number of visitors it gets - so ask yourself - why would people come to your web site? do you offer them interesting and informative information that relates to your product or service? if not, why would they come?

Relevant content and lots of it is a key for a successful web site. There is always room for more content on a web site, and you can never have too much.

Take this article for example, while it's fairly useful information for many of our visitors, it's also additional content for our web site - and will serve to help our site do better. Writing articles about aspects of your industry is a great way to generate content.

Set asside an hour a day (or at least an hour a week) to devote to adding new content to your web site.

#2 Freshness

Keep it currentHaving lots of content is great - but if it is all three years old it's not going to look like your site is much of a priority. The search engines actually track this. They monitor how frequently your site changes as they visit it for indexing. The more often it changes the better your rank in the freshness category.

What constitutes change? pretty much anything - which is why keeping a BLOG or adding frequent news articles to your web site usually produces such good results. It is also the reason why having something as simple as rotating content and the current date on every page has been shown to make a difference (although the search engines have been getting wise to this kind of tactic)

#3 No Tricks

Don't try to outsmart the Search Engines - Eventually you'll looseMany design firms promise success through the use of tricks, backdoors, and special tactics designed to sneak a web site into a top position rapidly. Something, of course, that the search engines are constantly battling to defeat. Why play the game? as the search engines find the cheaters they will plug the holes and a rank (that usually costs a pretty penny to achieve) will immediately be lost.

Rather, follow the recommendations of the search engines - most set out rules for web masters that outline what they would like to see in a web site (incidentally these rules are the main source of research for this document) By following the rules the engines are actually battling all the cheating web sites and working to promote the sites that follow the rules - they are fighting FOR you!

#4 Links

Links both in and our must be releventThere has been a lot of talk about link exchanges - people linking to others merely to gain a higher rank (hmmm this smacks of breaking tip #3) if you are going to link to someone and/or ask them to link to you - ask yourself: is it relevant?Any old link is not going to help you much - search engines will look at who is linking to you - they are also starting to pay very close attention to how many links you have off your web site on a page. This is being done to try and drop sites with pages of links (do you have a links page on your web site?)

It is far better to have relevant links places throughout your web site - on only those pages that specifically the topic that relates to the page being linked to.

Unfortunately you can't exert too much control over the way that other sites link to yours but it is worth looking at how a site usually links to others before to specifically go requesting a link from them.

#5 Structure

Organize your web site and everyone will thank you.Both the search engines and your web visitors prefer a web site that is well structured. The search engines due to their very nature (being computer programs) must break down all web sites into elements based on the structure of the pages. People, so frequently rushing to find the specific information they are looking for, rarely read through web pages but rather scan headings and bullied lists to find the detailed sections of interest. In both cases a well structured site will be far better received then one that is a mish-mosh of information haphazardly thrown together.

This is simple to do - but all too often missed. Make headings, use the correct coding tags for them, organize sections of content into groups, and use bold and bullied lists to present key points.

Keep in mind when writing paragraphs of text that most humans will not read them unless they are specifically titled with a headline that matches what they are looking for.

#6 Accessibility

A web site that speaks to all is better then a site that only speaks to some.

Tips #6 and #7 are closely related: The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) provides a list of guidelines for how to create web sites that are accessible to as many people (and systems) as possible. Think about your web site - can someone with a visual disability (perhaps even something as simple as colour-blindness) still get information about your product or service? If not, how do you feel knowing that you have just excluded a vast segment of the population from accessing your web site?

There are many simple ways that you can ensure your web site is accessible to people with special needs. A group of simple tests for the sites content and design that ensure your product or service is presented to the widest possible audience. The specifics are beyond the scope of this document - but be sure that you check with your designer to ensure that your site design and code is following accessibility guidelines.

#7 Quality Code

Well coded web sites perform better.

Many small business owners don't have too much control over the code used to create their web site - but it is still important to know how important it may be. Standard compliant code that has been checked for errors is easier for the search engines to assimilate. It is more widely visible across varied platforms (computer types) and in different browsers.

Ensure your web designer is writing standard compliant code that is validated for errors. You can also check your own web site using free on-line tools from the W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium - the standards body that administers Internet technologies)

#8 URLs

Prudent choice of URLs will impact your web site's performanceProfessional web designers should already know this - but if you are using a content management system to build your web site, or portions of it, it is important to understand the significance of the URL used to access pages on your web site.

Search engines look at the address of every page on your web site and try to extract key-words from the content of the url. For example, you may have a page about "Widgets" on your web site called "somewhere.com" creating the page with a filename of wigits.html will give a better keyword rank then page6.html this is also true of sub-directories on the site somewhere.com/widgets/... being better then somewhere.com/files/...

This is a fairly subtle point but makes a significant difference for most search engines. It can also make it much easier for people that are typing in a URL to access a specific page of your web site. Notice the URL for this web page - it's called http://www.pawprint.net/internet-marketing/small-business-web-site.php for a reason!

#9 Style

Looks do matter - but perhaps not the way you think...In the grand scheme of things the "looks" of a web site in the classic sense are not really that important - honestly! once people have looked at a web site for a few minutes they will quickly discard their first impression (based on looks) and move immediately to asking - is this site giving me the information I need - and can I find it quickly (going back to tips #1 - content and #5 - structure)

So what are we on about with style? simple - ensure the style of your site makes it easy to read. Avoid things like black backgrounds with white text (inverse text is harder to read) ALL CAPS (humans read by identifying word shapes - writing in all caps forces people to read every letter and quickly becomes annoying - plus on the net it is used as an typographic method of indicating you are screaming) You should also check your web site using a colour blind test to ensure that visitors with the various types of colour-blindness can still actually read your navigation.

#10 Images

Selling a product - better make sure it looks goodIf you are selling something that has a visual representation - then professional looking photography is key. Even a multi-million dollar resort will not look good if the photographs are amateurish. If you care about what you have to sell, then it's worth investing in some professional photographs to show people what you have. Remember, on-line people can't get a hold of your product - so you need to give them some really good photographs so that they can feel confident that it meets their needs. source:http://www.pawprint.net/internet-marketing/small-business-web-site.php