There are some common mistakes that can destroy a thriving ecommerce business. Most of them are easy to avoid, but some of them sideswipe business owners in their simplicity, and can leave a thriving business at the bottom of the pile for months. Here are some advanced Internet Marketing techniques to help webmasters avoid sabotaging their business websites.
Landing Pages
A common mistake is not paying attention to landing pages. Many ecommerce businesses make landing pages and leave it at that. Unfortunately, much of the web is human driven, and people do not follow mathematical patterns. This means that a company’s perfectly designed landing page may be ignored while a seemingly random page brings a few hundred hits a day.
This is caused by several reasons. The most common is a balance between keyword phrases used by users, which are often different from what they ‘should be,’ and the content on the page. It often has a lot to do with the number of random web users who linked to that page.
In many cases, a webmaster will notice a particular article that bloggers and forum posters love. They create hundreds of links to this page, increasing the Page Rank, and hits. Many webmasters never pay attention to these pages, failing to utilize these pages as landing pages. So, hundreds of thousands of visitors hit that page in a year – then leave.
Searching
Most Do-It-Yourself Internet Marketers work for years before they learn the value of searching their own pages. The best way to find unusual and new keyword phrases is to search your own site.
The important thing is to learn how well you rank against the competition and who exactly is your competition. This can be vital to the success of an Internet Marketing Campaign.
Step #1: Do all your competitors sell similar products or offer similar services? If not, it is possible that your ecommerce site is using the wrong content and keyword phrases. Targeting the wrong market will quickly deplete a company’s resources.
Step #2: Are the websites successful? Taking a look at the websites on the same page as your website will provide a good idea whether your idea is popular and profitable. If the ‘page’ you are on is not a good one, then it is time to change the website until your website is sharing a page with a better class of web pages.
Step #3: How many pages do you appear on? Every website should be able to gain ‘page one’ exposure on at least 50 search keyword phrases. The company may need to start with the more obscure keyword phrases, but appearing on page one of a keyword phrase that only receives 100 hits a month is better than appearing on page 300 of the #1 keyword phrase.
Step #4: Build Organic Listings as well as focus on your Pay Per Click campaign. Most webmasters find one favorite method of Internet Marketing and then stick with it, abandoning all others. Websites that use Pay Per Click campaigns should also focus on building Organic Listings. These ‘free’ listings will continue to serve the website, even if the PPC campaign becomes popular and ‘out of reach’ for small business use.
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