Best Ways to Market for Online Business?

[Natheer Halawani]

I'm currently building a website for online trading nation-wide (ebay-similar)
What do you recommend as advertising/marketing ways?
Ads on the radio? Brochures and Flyers?
What more can I do?
- Please skip that part, my site is ready to launch whenever I want.

[LaTonya]

I recommend the following steps.

1. know what your target market. do research and find out what type of person would most likely want your product or service and why.

2. brainstorm a list of keywords relative to your site. what would a customer type into google if they were looking for what you offered.

3. research those keywords using the google keyword tool. a good keyword is strongly relevant to your website, good traffic stats, low number of competing web pages. The first 10 results from a search should have at least one competitor with the page rank of 2 or less.

4. to find the number of competing web pages for any keyword simply put quotation marks around the keyword in the search bar and press enter. the number you see under the search bar on google will reveal the exact match number of competing web pages. you want a keyword with less than 50,000 competing web pages. it's ok for higher results though, just put more effort into ranking for that word over time.

5. put your keywords through another set of criteria. check to see if the keywords are making money by noticing if there are a good number of sponsored ads on the side and other shops are present in organic search.

6. now your ready to promote your website online and offline. start by optimizing your website. each page in your website should be optimized to rank for one keyword with secondary keyword present. this means your going to select a keyword and make sure everything on your site is relevant to that. this is how the search engines figure out what your site is all about.

7. optimize each page by placing the keyword in the url is possible, meta title, meta description, present in the first line of text on the site with the secondary keyword in the body of text as well. link to another relevant page in your site or another site by placing your keyword in the anchor text of an outbound link. keywords in the tags, images, categories.

8. make sure the content on your site is original and high quality. quality content tends to get shared often and will rank well from those backlinks.

9. use social media to connect with your customers and users. Open account on the major networks. twitter, google plus, facebook, and linkedin. on social media sites your going to try and connect like friends and use a personal touch instead of pure marketing. be entertaining and engaging, provide information of value, offer support and help. people will respond in kind to support your business and website.

10. article marketing. if you can write articles on websites like squidoo, hubpages, scribd, ezinearticles, etc you have the opportunity to promote your website and provide great info to people looking for what you have to offer.

11. backlinking. visit blogs that are relevant to your market and post comments to their posts. to get a backlink from this process enter your keyword in the name field, enter the page your optimizing in the website name field. if the blog owner approves the comment you'll receive a backlink. backlinks help drive your website to the top position in google. you'll also benefit if the site your commenting on has a high page rank and is a do follow blog.

12. video. post videos to youtube that are entertaining or informational to generate traffic to your website. you'll display your website url in the actual video and the description box. make sure to optimize your video for search also by placing the keyword in the title, description, and tags.

13. online classified ads. post ads with your site url. most ads are free so take advantage if this free exposure.

14. local seo. set up an account for google places so you pop up when people do a search that are in your area.

15. blog. blog about your business and offer helpful information that can be shared on social media sites.

16. offline advertising is helpful also. when you meet new people via networking or someone is curious about what you do offer a business card or flyer etc. more importantly get their information and ask if it's ok to call if you find something that can help them in some way. actually come through on that promise. this creates a good business relationship you can nurture ultimately turning contacts into customers or referrals. do the same for them. actively help their business or refer them to others. win/win.

17. this is actually a few of the promotional opportunities that are available to online marketers. focus on one area at a time and master that area. when you just starting out it will difficult to do everything at once. when money permits you can add paid advertising to your arsenal. google adwords, facebook ads, microsoft has an advertising program too.

[Peter Y]

The following is a free online course that has sections on how to do that. You can just skip whatever is irrelevant.

http://wauportal.com/the-mad-marketing-method-course/

You are focusing on something pretty large. I recommend to join at:
http://wauportal.com/
In there, you will become an expert on what you're looking for.

[Jacobo]

Submit your business to online directories. Also write 4-5 well thought out articles that describe your business and the benefits that one will possess by engaging your business. Submit them to online article directories. Create a Facebook Fanpage that brings the social marketing aspect into the picture as well.

[Maurizio Cibelli]

go to admego.com, enter your site address and let the platform do the rest!

[Robert]

Hi Natheer Halawani ,

Some good advice there from La Tonya. I personally think that people pay too much attention to SEO.
Google in particular keep changing their algorithm so that you could work hard to achieve a good ranking only to find next week you are further down the ratings again.

For people to find your site good old fashioned advertising is the key. Now you can pay for advertising but that can be expensive and does not guarantee results. There are a number of free ways to advertise and if you're prepared to put in some time and effort you can achieve good results.
The best part is by adopting these methods you create backlinks to your site.

Now I suggest you grab a cup or glass of your favourite drink, find a place to relax where you won't be disturbed and watch this set of video
tutorials on free advertising. They will guide you step by step on the way to do each method. They are also FREE to you. Nothing to pay.

http://www.chrisfarrellmembership.com/hg...dnL9&p=104

Good luck and best wishes.
Robert.

[TazMan]

Answer questions here? Beside, eBay has a patent, so you can't really copy it...