Long term marketing options - Your best?

[sylviad]

Hi,

You've probably noticed that there are few, if any, ways to market your site that you can expect to work for a good length of time. In other words, you do one method and get some results from it, but if you don't redo that effort, your site will disappear again.

I've heard that article marketing is one of the best ways to focus your efforts for long-term results. As long as people keep picking up your articles for their sites, you can get ongoing benefits indefinitely.

Directory listings is another option, but I question how effective it really is (except the biggies, of course - Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.). Smaller directories come and go, your links get removed and in many cases, never even make it into the directory.

There are 3 questions to this:

1) What methods do you use that do not require constant weekly or monthly attention for them to continue to work?

2) How often do you have to repeat this method for it to keep working?

3) Which methods have been most effective for you (boosted traffic, sales, sign-ups, etc.)? Please specify which benefit you received.

Thanks.

Sylvia

[jhongren]

Hi Sylvia,

Beside article marketing, I think video marketing and social bookmarking sites are good choices too.

They are self-renewed in the sense lets say for social bookmarking sites, you post or site get favored by many users. It gets visits again and again.

Likewise for video submission sites.

Cheers,
John

[sylviad]

Thanks John,

Video marketing is on my list, too, because it has gained tremendous popularity lately. YouTube videos end up on CNN all the time. You can't get better exposure than that. LOL!

Of course, the more entertaining you can make the videos, the more popular they will be and the more success you will have. I think video marketing is one of the top favorites today.

Sylvia

[jensrsa]

Talking of long term strategy:

1. Good basic SEO web design to start with to generate and build generic search engine traffic including

- focused FAQs, page per question - 120 - 200 words
- short focused articles, max 300 words. If you have 5 points to get across, use 5 articles
- regular new content to attract return visitors, this is what makes the good blogs good

Good focused content keep on working, sometimes for years, with minimal updating.

I use directories on most of my sites. Every listing is a new entry into the search engines - even a small directory can have a thousand + pages listed on Google. And they give me a steady supply of new paying clients.

Jens

[Dan Grossman]

1) Writing great content for your own site will bring links and search engine traffic for years (articles I wrote 10 years ago still get traffic and new mentions on forums and blogs)

2) Creating great free tools for others to use will bring links and search traffic for years (the "free guestbooks" I offer on my "webmaster resources" site for the past 12 years [a Perl script I wrote in '96, rewritten in PHP in '04] still bringing new people over)

3) Provide a great product and your customers will keep recommending you years after they purchased

The secret to long term marketing online is to provide something of real value. After initially spreading the word, you only have to keep working month after month if your content/product/service isn't good enough to spread itself. Instead of working on finding that secret marketing technique, work on making your site that good.

[jensrsa]

Originally Posted by Dan Grossman

Instead of working on finding that secret marketing technique, work on making your site that good.

Great! Your own?

Jens

[sylviad]

Dan...

I like your ideas. The script and webmaster resources would be great for sites that cater to that market. Viral Marketing using valuable products is a good one, too. In fact, it probably belongs near the top of the list for its continued exposure and potential for massive distribution.

Jens...

Good idea to create 5 articles (1 per point) instead of one long article. You want to provide incomplete information, and what better way to do that. It would keep them reading, and the longer you keep them around, the more likely they are to buy something.

Directories on your sites? You mean you have like a resources/links page? Or a true directory right within your site? Wouldn't that devalue your rank? Of course, if you have enough quality content it could balance it out I guess. If so, how much quality content would be required to counter the directory?

Sylvia

[jensrsa]

Originally Posted by sylviad

Good idea to create 5 articles (1 per point) instead of one long article. You want to provide incomplete information, and what better way to do that. It would keep them reading, and the longer you keep them around, the more likely they are to buy something.
Sylvia

In part, but also it is easier to optimise a short focused article than a long varied one.

Originally Posted by sylviad

Directories on your sites? You mean you have like a resources/links page? Or a true directory right within your site? Wouldn't that devalue your rank? Of course, if you have enough quality content it could balance it out I guess. If so, how much quality content would be required to counter the directory?
Sylvia

I haven't really experienced that. All my directories have a free listing option and as far as I can figure the protential problems are mainly with link farms, link lists and paid directories

I set up a full directories for the niche the site is in. Most of my sites are directories though.

One of my sites I put up in February gets a lot of Google traffic and on a site: search on google shows

Results 1 - 10 of about 14,900 from joomlademo15.com

I can't figure that out - it only has about 70 pages and a few directory listings.

My approach probably won't work for most people as I take a long term view, I'm building my pension and my kids inheritance so I'll set up a site and leave it for a while before I start to really work on it. Although I have about 150 sites I only really focus on about 5 to 10 now, the rest I work on in between until they start showing promise.

However, adding a directory, not a link farm, gives you the opportunity to build your mailing list, advertising, etc. within your niche.

Jens

[sylviad]

Hi,

Those results you show... those aren't pages on your site, are they? They are pages on the web that have a link to your site, are they not? If you read through the results, you will likely find that some are from sites where people have made reference to your site.

This might not apply to you but...

You can't rely on results by entering your name/site all the time (depending on what you're using to search). I ran a search on my name and came up with thousands upon thousands of returns, but when I checked through them, it turns out there is someone else with my name. Not surprising, I suppose. Also, the results separated different words and considered them separate results.

I was curious because another Warrior suggested running a search on this guru's name and the returns were extremely huge. Now I wonder if all those returns really were the same person.

Sylvia

[Frank Murphy]

In my case, videos can bring in a rush in traffic, provide you do proper research on youtube. I find that if i model my videos after the highly viewed ones, i get lots of traffic. And this traffic is mainly for list building purposes..

[naruq]

For me offline Industry Trade Magazines and Direct Mail. You will have to invest some money. However, You will be able to target buyers and more serious prospects to your product and services. I consistently get target quality traffic to my websites month in and month out.

[jensrsa]

Originally Posted by sylviad

Hi,

Those results you show... those aren't pages on your site, are they? They are pages on the web that have a link to your site, are they not? If you read through the results, you will likely find that some are from sites where people have made reference to your site.

This might not apply to you but...

You can't rely on results by entering your name/site all the time (depending on what you're using to search). I ran a search on my name and came up with thousands upon thousands of returns, but when I checked through them, it turns out there is someone else with my name. Not surprising, I suppose. Also, the results separated different words and considered them separate results.

I was curious because another Warrior suggested running a search on this guru's name and the returns were extremely huge. Now I wonder if all those returns really were the same person.

Sylvia

I don't bother too much about those figures but a site:domain.com is supposed to show the pages of your site listed on google. Most of my older directories run to 500 - 1000 pages listed

findtravelsites - 1010
sacontractors.co.za - 954

Those GREAT figures must have something to do with the session id's that the pages generate each time so each time a googlebot visits it gets "new" pages and the site had 163,800 hots from the googlebot in August so far.

The point of discussion though - SEO directories build your page numbers, widening the net for searches and I believe without a detrimental effect on your listings.

Add niche articles, etc. and you have a very powerful longterm traffic funnel and lead generator.

Jens