# General Business Category > Business Online Forum >  Managing a business website

## Webmaster

Hi there

So you want to market online? Don’t want to join the masses of sites that have no growth? Best you start reading.  Lack of marketing is the biggest downfall online and you’re never going to get to where you want to be without it.  

If you need advice on website design and hosting I can help and I am pretty confident you’ll be impressed with what I have to offer. Online marketing I can offer general advice but it’s up to you to find out where to find your target customers.

Online marketing however has no quick fix. Many companies offer all kind of products to build your site, and unless they have someone daily to focus on your web marketing and are passionate to make it work.  You’re pretty much wasting your money.  Do it allot and you might as well be marketing yourself.  

Can you hire a permanent employee/specialist to help you do marketing?
This is a very positive step and can surely bring in the cash. There are a few tips and tricks to remember when making a website and making it work.

1.	Your website needs to be SEO friendly. That means in real that it is displayed in HTML(Hypertext Markup Language) Neatly
HTML is the core of internet pages. I’ve heard Many times before
 No HTML = No internet.
Search Engines are growing no doubt and I’m pretty sure their inability to read other languages is soon a thing of the past. There are a few good reasons they stick to the basic HTML, unimportant info for now.

2.	If and when your keywords are many and you have a good 500 words per page. Paragraphs and informative content then you can take a look around for applications that will measure your traffic. Google has many useful free applications like Google analytics. Our hosting company offers a handful of useful free tools that can help you check your traffic and give all sorts of important information. E.G. details about what browser is being used, IP address, Country, origin, time on website, where your traffic originated and where they went.

3.	Now you have a working system and can monitor your traffic.  It’s a good idea to start marketing. Make sure your website is submitted to search engines, Especially Google.  There are many back-end systems that your website designer should have already setup that will help boost your scoring on the search engines. Sorry I need to keep this short I’ll explain more in future posts.

4.	Right here is the trick to online marketing.  Linking, Linking and Linking. You don’t link to get people to follow, simply link to get search engines to better your ranking.  High ranking sites on Google linking back to you gives you extra point’s, higher points will push you up on search engine listings. Search engines want to make people happy. Happy people use their search Engine more. :Smile: 

5.	Make people happy. Share information, update your website regularly, Blogging is a great way to do this! Growing a website is compared to getting water to change direction in a river. You need to make the water start dripping in and then make it want to bring more.  You monitor what works then focus on that area.

6.	More traffic also tells Google to increase your score, so do some offline marketing. 

Hope this helps

Regards
Webmaster

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Chatmaster (20-Oct-10), Dave A (18-Oct-10)

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## solweb

Interesting article. It really is that simple, any web site needs to be worked at and this takes time. Amazing how clients often expect us to wave a magic wand and viola, the have traffic and sales . If only life was that simple!

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Webmaster (19-Oct-10)

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## Webmaster

:Smile:  Yea it is 'That simple' lol

It takes time to market a website. However once your website is working and has a good traffic flow it can pretty market itself.  No I don't mean you sit back and watch the money flow. If your site offers interactivity and has enough to attract customers back it becomes much easier to make it work. Another reason why blogging is so helpful & regular updates makes people wonder what’s new. A company website should have someone allocated. It's a full time job and like this definitely a huge asset.

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## Chatmaster

Hi Webmaster

Good article that will hopefully open a few minds on how the Internet truly works. I think it is important for business people to also understand the TrustRank paper published in 2004 to understand how search engines sees the future from the visitors point of view. Some SEO companies has some challenges to obtain good rankings in competitive markets with companies not maintaining their websites properly. Your pointers is certainly true and worth paying attention too.

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Webmaster (26-Oct-10)

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## Webmaster

Thanks for the positive response Chatmaster.

Any business website needs the same effort it takes to run the business. It is a very useful tool and a great way for potential customers to build trust in business by learning what you stand for even if you’re not targeting online traffic, you should make sure your website is kept up to date, as it will work as a portfolio for clients that find a link to your website via offline means.

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## jdg1868

My company wants to promote home security sytem in SA, then my manager told me post my system's introduction on different forums, which will attract potential customers, however this method has no effect and no one connect with us. And I think my company's website is bad, and I want to advice my manager to exchange it. 

Do you think whether my manage's method effective or my method?  

Looking for advice!

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## OnlineMarketing

Jesus my chinese friend are you serious? Is the pope a catholic? The english version of your website is terrible, no english speaking person could take it seriously, my mandarin is zero so i am very impressed with your english but posting on forums with anything less than perfect english is a tough ask. You should consider finding a partner in SA that already has a salesforce in the security market, assuming your product stacks up.

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## jdg1868

> Jesus my chinese friend are you serious? Is the pope a catholic? The english version of your website is terrible, no english speaking person could take it seriously, my mandarin is zero so i am very impressed with your english but posting on forums with anything less than perfect english is a tough ask. You should consider finding a partner in SA that already has a salesforce in the security market, assuming your product stacks up.



Do you mean you cannot understand my company's english introduction?  Does the english introduction has some problems?

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## Webmaster

Hi jdg1868 


You're both right the website needs allot of work and social networking is a great way to develop a client base.  One is simply making a portfolio that people find to be professional and the other is needed for marketing. You need both to work if your going to be successful.

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## jdg1868

> Hi jdg1868 
> 
> 
> You're both right the website needs allot of work and social networking is a great way to develop a client base.  One is simply making a portfolio that people find to be professional and the other is needed for marketing. You need both to work if your going to be successful.


Thank you for advice.

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## Chatmaster

> Do you mean you cannot understand my company's english introduction?  Does the english introduction has some problems?


I have to agree, your site will not be able to sell much. 

From an online selling perspective, your site simply do not provide me with the information I would need to "Buy". Your English translator didn't do a bad job, but the way English is spoken in countries like the US, UK, Aus and SA it simply doesn't work.

My advise to you is to use more visual (Video, Pictures) and simply highlight the key selling points. Rather avoid writing paragraphs of information as this will make the job of translating it to English much more simpler as well as effective.

I would like to highlight the following examples




> Experts of Security System


 should rather be "Security Systems Experts"




> World economy has developed rapidly in recent years, so each country’s resource need has increasingly, and then the ocean shipping market was booming.


 should rather be "In recent years several countries had to deal with increased resource requirements, due to a rapid developing world economy and a booming shipping industry."

My sentences can definitely be improved but at least it makes sense. The content on your site doesn't make sense unless you analyse each sentence until it makes sense.

The average person interested in your kind of products do not like to read information as you present it. They would like to see a visual as well as specifications.

For example:

<Picture> 
Muscle velocity:
Damage radius:
Amo type:
Lethal/non-lethal:
Range:


Etc.

Avoid the paragraphs and rather look at key selling points. Keywords you could look at would include "Powerful, Range, Effective etc.

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AndyD (21-Feb-11), jdg1868 (22-Feb-11)

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## jdg1868

For  Chatmaster 

According to your examples, I think improve my english level is necessary. And you said english expression is different between US and SA, What differences are they?

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## Chatmaster

> And you said english expression is different between US and SA, What differences are they?


 I think you misread my post. I did not state that there were a difference between the US and SA English (Although, strictly speaking this is correct, but irrelevant in this discussion) 

Let me put it differently. I am far from an English master (Many people find my English deliciously) but your site's content seems to be written with a dictionary and with many mistakes in terms of context, grammar and word order. That is why I say stick to short points, instead of paragraphs. Stick to key selling points, they are self explanatory to your target market.

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## Dave A

> but your site's content seems to be written with a dictionary and with many mistakes in terms of context, grammar and word order.


I suspect something like the Google translation tool. It's kinda functional for communication, but it certainly loses a lot of the subtleties - and when it come to making an impression, it is *all* about those subtleties!

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## Webmaster

Hi guys, 

this point in any developed website is important

1. Absolutely stick to specifics, Remember your clients took the step to view your site and it’s your marketing tool to those clients!
2. Content is important especially to the clients that we will expect to do business with and to Google.
3. Don't assume. Your clients might find what your explaining to be confusing. Just because you know how your product works don't assume everyone else does.

If you’re struggling with the content get an editor to help! It could make all the difference. Even if your editor is just an educated, first language speaking individual.

PS Good luck

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## jdg1868

I know why no one has interested in my security system because my poor english.

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## Webmaster

jdg1868 - I can assure you 100% 

- Even if your website was perfect with all the bells and whistles!
 Your traffic would not be any better without a solid marketing plan. 

Online and if possibility offline.

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## jdg1868

> jdg1868 - I can assure you 100% 
> 
> - Even if your website was perfect with all the bells and whistles!
>  Your traffic would not be any better without a solid marketing plan. 
> 
> Online and if possibility offline.



I have no experience of marketing. What is a solid marketing plan?

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## Webmaster

:Smile:  Check the forum for marketing advice, SEO help, Idea's turned into action, Try contact Social Butterflys, or Other social media groups.

Search Google, create a marketing niche that suites your product or your target client base.  

Marketing is a full time job!

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## Adriaan

Hey Webmaster

Thanks for starting this thread! Great stuff!

Yea, I totally agree. Online marketing takes a long time and is hard work, an ongoing process.
Sometimes you can shoot to Google's first page, but that depends on the niche you,re in and the competition you've got.

The 2 most important things in SEO, like Webmaster said, is links to your site, and content. That's it.

So, how do you build links and get content?

1. Article marketing, like www ezinearticles dot com
2. Video marketing, like www youtube dot com
3. On-page seo, like keyword density, <H1> tags, image tags, meta tags etc
4. Press releases, like www prlog dot org
5. Social media like www twitter dot com
6. Google places
7. Facebook fan page
8. PPC (Pay per click) marketing, like Google and Facebook
9. Directory listings and citations
10. Content - well, your website should be about what you know, and know how to search for further info on it, at Google.

These are some of the more important methods, there are others as well. 

I'd like to see your contributions.

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Webmaster (02-Mar-11)

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## ava_camen

great advice. i especially agree with the part that relying on Google software to help them in their business marketing  :Smile:

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## Webmaster

Hi Adriaan

Thanks for your contribution to my thread  :Smile: 

There are many ways to build website marketing, and your list is a great place to start.

I guess among the regulars in web marketing its general knowledge but did you know Google uses over 200 criteria items to rate your website!

It once seemed to me that once I have an attractive and interesting website the rest is marketing. 
But there is allot you need to take into mind. What you do does not matter *as much* as how you do it.

H tags for example are better recognised by search engine bots than strong or pixel sized text and that's just how you choose your font size!

I also recommend getting your website checked by the (w3c validator - search Google) for HTML and CSS - it's a good start!

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