Website Design and Promotion

3 Ways to Get Incoming Links

Internet marketing guru, Ralph Wilson, of Web Marketing Today writes about Three Ways to Get Non-Reciprocal Links:

1. Create lots of valuable content (over many pages), which people will naturally want to link to.
2. Find the free directories that don't require a reciprocal link.
3. Write and distribute a "give-away" article, with links back to your site.

Ralph actually has nine other linking strategies, if you want to purchase his SEO guide.

Success with Pay Per Click Advertisting

Brian Clark at Copyblogger has a great post summarizing how to make the most out of your pay per click ads. He notes the two commom mistakes people make when using pay per click:

1. Sending traffic from your pay per click ads to the home page of your website or blog instead of to a specific landing page.

2. Not making an attempt to to establish a relationship with those that don’t buy (i.e. getting subscribers to your newsletter or blog), once they get to your site so that you can market to them in the future.

He then outlines 5 steps for boosting your conversion rates for sales while also increasing subscriber numbers for your newsletter or blog.

While the method Brian describes is well known by those marketing on the Internet, as he points out, many people still neglect to utilize it.

Purely Graphical Home Page

First impressions are important, of course, especially on the web when you only have a few seconds to grab visitors' attentions. When you're selling environmentally friendly products or services, you want your site's home page to look great. But does that mean it should be all graphics or Flash? Not if ranking high in search engines, such as Google, is essential.

Here's a good thread in HighRankings.com on the topic, which confirms what we're always preaching here: yes, your home page should look great, but it's crucial that it include at least some text. Your home page is the most important page of your site as far as both visitors and search engines are concerned. Most external links to your site will point to your home page, giving it "weight", and that weight will carry through to the other pages on your site (which had better be linked from your home page — if not directly, than within two clicks). So, optimize that home page as best as you can, both visually and in terms of text.

Follow the F

Jakob Nielsen of useit.com has an interesting article discussing an eye-tracking study, which shows reading patterns of web page viewers. Turns out to be a F-shaped pattern: Readers' eyes start at the top, in a horizontal motion, then move down the page and do a second horizontal movement, then scan the left side of the page, in a vertical motion.

What does this mean in terms of designing a web page?

1. Visitors to your site won't — initially, at least — read everything that's on the page; they'll scan first.
2. Your first two paragraphs of copy (text) should be very important.
3. It's a good idea to start each paragraph, subheading, bullet point, etc. (i.e., the part of the left side of the page) with information-rich words to grab the reader's attention.

Green Kudos

Here's a unique, green marketing effort.  DeepMarket.com, "a blog that researches new techniques for stock market analysis," has joined forces with CarbonFund.org in a special promotion in which, for every blog that links to their site, they'll offset one ton of carbon emissions.

Sure is a great way to garner some attention and do some good at the same time. To read more about this initiative on TreeHugger, click here.