# General Business Category > Marketing Forum >  How do I make myself visible?

## Rudi

Hi all,

I have taken over a website and am administering it for a company. I am trying to make the website visible to the general business community in SA. I have posted the site to Google crawlers and done what I can to make the website visible using meta tags etc... but I would like to know if there are any webmaster experts around this forum who can direct me to some more methods to increase the website visibility more. For example: Where can I post news about this Life Skills Company, what other sites are great to intoduce new products on and any other tips to bring traffic to a new"ish" site.

There must be some "old" hands, or experienced administrators how have a thing or two to share with a newbie....

Many tx and cheers!

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## IanF

> what other sites are great to intoduce new products on and any other tips to bring traffic to a new"ish" site.
> 
> There must be some "old" hands, or experienced administrators how have a thing or two to share with a newbie....
> 
> Many tx and cheers!


Rudi
Try google adwords I spend about R200 a month on it and it is working for me. Great features like you prepay,set daily limits turn off when busy etc. :Smile:

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## Dave A

To answer your more direct question, mygenius.com is worth a look. 

In terms of what you are doing and given our little aside earlier, we've got a list of articles here - there's a small mound of treasure there that might help. Roelof aka Chatmaster is a particular expert in the field and I'm sure can help you more than I can.

Another great resource is Ann Williams, also a member here. Look up her profile and visit her website for ideas.

My question, given the little I know about you right now, is how much do you know about the company's business?

Personally, I see much of this as the modern online version of being the old fashioned sales rep. You need to build a network which can refer you potential clients. 

Now one of these network resources are search engines, and you win them over in a rather technical way. 

But the internet is used by people. And the marketing techniques that work for people work over the internet too, except that if done right, your effort becomes far more leveraged than in the "real" world.

If you're more a website admin than a mine of useful information about the company, either you're going to have to learn more about what they do, or you should consider gearing up your company subject matter experts for some exposure on the web. 

This is where company blogs can help, I guess. Then you can socialise your way round the right parts of the net, gently nudging people in the right direction when appropriate.

People do business with people - preferably people they know and like. Hence the rise of business interest in Web 2.0.

Another option, as Ian has raised, is advertising. You'll need a budget, though.

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## RKS Computer Solutions

Rudi,

If I can make one suggestion...  The site is well set out and seems in some place to be very organised, but in other spots there is too much info on single pages, which makes browsing a tad disorganised, even if having the "go to top" buttons right there...

Also, quick meta-check on the home page, nothing there, where did you add those meta tags?

Something which might work a load better than the current setup you have of single-built static pages, is maybe to go the way of a CMS (Content Management System) like Joomla or something simular...  This would give you greater control over single pages without having to worry about your linking structure failing, and new information can be brought to the attention of your visitors a lot quicker...

If you need any more info, do ask!

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## Chatmaster

Rudi, before I continue. Some criticism about the website that I haven't mentioned before. Why do you have the landing page as the current home page. It is acting like a shop with a closed door that says we are open but you have to knock first. It is bad in many ways, including usability and conversions.

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## Rudi

Thanks for that tip Ian. I am not in control of the budgeting site of the web, so I may need to sell the idea internally before I can do that. But its great to hear that it is working for you and it gives me the confidence to try it out in the future.
TX

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## Rudi

Dave...thats a lot of info in one post! I will systematically look through all your links and dvice during the weekend and see what I can learn. I appreciate the effort to help me with all your advice.

Many thanks!

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## Rudi

RKS,

This is great advice. After you mentioned tis, I could agree with you that the "home" page does contain a bit too much info. Though I was the one to design the website, I was asked to put the info together on this format on the page, so I did not really have to much to say in the matter. It may develop and change as time goes by. I have plans to use collapsable menus soon to eliminate all those bulleted lists of hyperlinks, and over time I will be cleaning up the interface... I accept and agree though with your initial observations.

About those meta tags... they are on the index (landing) page in the heads section. I guess thats the meta tags as they start with meta  :Smile:  Maybe you can give me some more advice on these as I know they are useful in crawler searches etc..

I have never used Joomla?! The site is developed in FrontPage and it seems that frontPage is quite capable of maintaining the linking structure. The link bars at the top of each page are automatically changed when I update the navigational layout in FrontPage. I have never had issues with it or with any "broken links". I have heard of Joomla but I will have to read up a bit more about it to develop any confidence in this. I am a fairly old hand in FrontPage and its difficult to break old habits...  :Smile: 

Many tx for the advice!




> Rudi,
> 
> If I can make one suggestion...  The site is well set out and seems in some place to be very organised, but in other spots there is too much info on single pages, which makes browsing a tad disorganised, even if having the "go to top" buttons right there...
> 
> Also, quick meta-check on the home page, nothing there, where did you add those meta tags?
> 
> Something which might work a load better than the current setup you have of single-built static pages, is maybe to go the way of a CMS (Content Management System) like Joomla or something simular...  This would give you greater control over single pages without having to worry about your linking structure failing, and new information can be brought to the attention of your visitors a lot quicker...
> 
> If you need any more info, do ask!

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## Rudi

Roelof...

I often see websites with this sort of welcome page. I do admit that when I initially designed the page I was intending to put more into of the company on it. However, after meetings with the CEO and other managers, the info was moved to the "Home" page. I guess the Welcome page is a remnant of the decision that was made after I started creating the site. I never considered it to be a form of "closed door". I appreciate the advice though. Its good to get insight from experienced sources. I wil review the purpose of the page in the context of the rest of the site and come to some conclusion to its purpose or existence.

I am grateful for any more support you can offer to add professionalism to the site!
Cheers

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## Chatmaster

What version of Frontpage are you using?

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## Rudi

FrontPage 2003

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## Chatmaster

FrontPage 2003 is good, although it still has issues with dirty and badly structured HTML it is much better than it's predecessors. Rudi I am truly sorry I haven't added more effort to your request yet. But I have had a pretty busy day. I am still working atm, but will give you some proper pointers a little later when I am done with my current crisis.

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## Rudi

Please do not prioritize my requests. This is an open forum and I am already blown away by the pointers and advice I have recieved.

I will certainly appreciate any more tips and ideas, but please Roelof...at a time that is convenient and suitable for you.

Many tx

Rudi

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## Chatmaster

Just a final question for when I start. Do you have ANY budget available for marketing?

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## Chatmaster

Rudi before I start, please understand that I am completely honest with you and rather tell you what you need to hear, it might not be what you want to hear thoughÃ¢â¬Â¦

It is very important that you understand that internet marketing consist out of everything, from the site design to the actual marketing methods. You cannot do one without the other! You have ultimately build an online salesman. You didnÃ¢â¬â¢t put a brochure or information pamphlet live, you actually designed a salesman that must be able to sell to all the visitors that it meets.

That being said here goesÃ¢â¬Â¦

First of all lets define your current situation.

You have been tasked to obtain exposure for your companyÃ¢â¬â¢s website. As a webmaster it means that you have a fair amount of restrictions to deal with. You probably cannot write content for your site or publish articles on the web and therefore you need cooperation from the other role players within the company. You cannot go onto forums and contribute because you are a webmaster and not necessarily knowledgeable in the subject. 

A note before I take you through the steps is to ensure that the website address is clearly visible on all company stationary and promotional material.

*Step 1*

Get some kind of commitment from the role players within your company e.g. marketing department, public relations department, trainers and other people that can assist you in obtaining content and an understanding of the product. This is important even if you are only the webmaster because you have to ensure that your website is designed correctly for the purpose it serves.

*Step 2*

Do keyword research. Get some help here from people that understand the product or service to contribute. It I important to note that the main objective will be to establish a marketing strategy for your website rather than doing keyword research only for SEO purposes. 
Keyword research is done in 3 steps. 
ÃÂ·	You ask the knowledgeable people in the company to provide you with a list of 10-20 keywords most descriptive of your product.
ÃÂ·	You go to Dictionary.com and get alternatives for these keywords.
ÃÂ·	You go to Thesaurus to get antonyms and synonyms of these same keywords.
At the end of the day you should have at least a hundred keywords available to you. The sole purpose of these keywords is to determine your target market. Nothing else just that! Now you can start planning your marketing strategy!

Remember! Your site is currently a little spot in the middle of nowhere. Unlike a conventional shop or office it is not next to a busy highway or road. It doesnÃ¢â¬â¢t have cars or pedestrians walking past. It has no roads to it and it certainly doesnÃ¢â¬â¢t have ANY feet walking past the shop to see the front window and create interest enough to make people have a closer look. (BTW, that is why your home page should go, it is truly very bad for conversions, believe me it must go)

So your main objective will now be to create roads to your site from other sites within the same theme. Just picture how you are going to build these roads and how the traffic will start flowing  :Big Grin: 

As with any road in normal life, the more in roads you have the more traffic it will generate. Just imagine having highways, hundreds of them running past your website! That must give your site traffic.

*Step 3*

Now place your keywords in order of preference, in other words, the most important ones first and the least important last.

*Step 4*

Use Google.com and Google.co.za local to find other sites that are ranking for these keywords. Now these sites you will have to list in an excel sheet where you will categorize them into the following categories. These words will be added to the single keyword phrases in your list to find resources where you can create some roads (links) to your site.
ÃÂ·	Communities
ÃÂ·	Articles
ÃÂ·	Social media
ÃÂ·	News
ÃÂ·	Press releases
ÃÂ·	Portals
ÃÂ·	Directories
ÃÂ·	Classifieds
ÃÂ·	Calendars

These categories will have sub sections that you will tick or indicate in some way
ÃÂ·	Free listings
ÃÂ·	Paid listings
ÃÂ·	Reciprocal
ÃÂ·	Ranking above 20

First lets make sure you understand the categories
Communities
These are normally forums and can even be blogs groups where there are several contributors to the same blog.
Articles
These are sites where you can publish articles. A site like Articlecity for example
Social Media
These also include blogs, social sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit, Technorati, Squidoo, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Flickr, Furl, MySpace and Yahoo! Answers.
News
These would be sites where you will be allowed to publish news relating to your company. News can be defined as almost anything. Having 5 people attend a training session is ok but having a record of 10 people attending is news. If the CEO bumped his car, it is an accident, but having a new graphics designer appointed is news, I think you get my point  :Big Grin: 
Press releases
Very similar to News but you will have to search it separately when you are trying to find these sites.
Portals
These are huge sites, normally covering all topics related to your business, it also normally have several sections like forums, blogs, news sections blah, blah, blah, it is a big site
Directories
This does not include search engines. It will be sites like Ananzi and Dmoz where a directory o sites related to your industry is located.
Classified ads
Sites that allows you to ad classified ads for free.
Calendars
Sites that allows you to list events, like this site, Bizcommunity etc.

Now you have several marketing avenues to work with.

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## Chatmaster

*Step 5*

This is probably the most important step of all. It is ensuring that your site design is fundamentally done right! This means that on page SEO factors are done right and that keyword research is applied to your site structure and site layout. It is to ensure that in terms of site layout the maximum conversion rate is obtained and that the home page indicates the most possible information relating to what the user can expect when hitting the site. In other words usability.

Now lets look at your site from a critical point of view.

SEO onpage factors for www.maxima-training.com 

Page Titles
Page titles like Welcome and Home needs to be fixed. 

When looking at your site layout you need to utilize your keyword research and plan it before you continue any further. I will use a real estate site layout as an example.
Lets say I have a real estate portal site. My main keyword is real estate. Therefore my homepage title will be “Real Estate – my company name”
My following keywords that I will target will be related to Real Estate and will form the first level of depth of my site. For example, Real estate news, Residential Property, Farms, Empty stands, Business etc.

The second level (depth) of the site will be pages located under their different categories. Eg Residential Property will have the following pages under it. Property in Gauteng, Property in Limpopo, Property in Mpumalanga etc.

The third level for Gauteng will be, Property in Johannesburg, Property in Pretoria, Property in Heidelberg etc.
And so forth. I think you get the idea. Now these keywords will be your page title. Unless you wish to rank for welcome and home  :Wink: 

Meta tags
Meta tags are only used by directories like Ananzi. 

The Meta tags should be unique for every single page in the site. Currently they do not exist and I suggest that you fix that ASAP. 

Keyword meta tag only contains keywords that are actually present on the page. Do not put other keywords in there. If you have only 4 or 5 keywords in the keyword meta tag that is fine. The same rule applies to the description tag except that it will probably only contain the main keyword as is in your page title.

_NOTE: Never target more than one keyword phrase per page! This also goes for the content of each page. If need to target another keyword, create a new page!_

General
Remove all onpage style sheets and link to them externally. The same goes for JavaScript.

Remove all spaces from your URL’s and replace the spaces with Hyphens. These links will be read or published as dead links by some directories and search engines.

Use H1-H5 for page headers and avoid using class to assign specific styles. You can modify H tags just as easily in the style sheets but it will tell the spider this is a header and this is what the page is all about.

Use <Strong> or H2-5 for sub sections of your content.

Ensure that you have a robots.txt file in your root. Even it doesn’t exclude anything, it ensure that your site stats shows real indexing errors and not a SE looking for the file not finding it. The same goes for a favicon.ico

Utilize contextual links from inside your site context to link to relevant external and internal pages.

There are more stuff here, but lets just focus on the basics first  :Big Grin: 

Conversion strategies and usability

Enough said about your home page?

Lets look at the current page saying home in the page title.
*	Ask yourself what is the conversion indicator. Is it a registration of some sorts, perhaps it is a booking? What would you define as a conversion

*	Now look at a standard website’s hotspots.
      - They normally run from under your page header top to bottom in a zig zag formation from left to right. So your most valuable information that will lead to a conversion milestone must be located at the top left under the page header. 
      - Your site’s page header is located in the middle which will cause confusion to the visitor. This would have been fine but you have a search that is very prominent on the left and a contact us which is very prominent on the right.
      - Prominence of areas of your site is also very confusing. Almost everything is equally prominent meaning that the visitor is not guided specifically to conversion milestones. Although this is bad for conversions it is extremely bad for the visitor, who immediately feels overwhelmed by everything being equally important and there are so many of them, that he will choose to leave. I am sure that your site analytics tool will confirm this.
      - Main navigation is located at the far top, this is particularly bad as it has major usability issues especially with the current design of the site. The visitors normally expect a main navigation menu underneath the page header and the contact us link at the far right corner.
      - Left navigation menu is cramped and it seems like all the links are in bold. This plays a major role in terms of emphasizing conversion factors on the site. Make it softer and les intimidating.
      - Avoid using bullets for the navigation. Bullets should exclusively be used to highlight conversion factors within content. Users normally scan through a page and would read bulleted lists with more attention. They should be short and act as the salesman would act in a shop. Highlighting sales pitches.
      - The main content area of every page is the center part. Especially on a home page. This should summarize the main sales points to the visitor. Remember a visitor scans through a website, they do NOT read everything.
      - Internal pages are loosing the framework of the site, this is particularly bad. A site cannot continuously change its appearance as the user needs to quickly be able to find his way. You will definitely loose your visitors after the second click, guaranteed. 
      - In terms of your refer a friend functionality, I highly recommend you place that up higher and to the right side of the page. Hiding it at the bottom right is disempowering it completely.



I think this is enough for now, I really do not want to make it tougher on you.

I would love to give you more information and there is a lot more that you can easily do, but I seriously recommend that you look at the above first.

In the mean time if it is at all possible also get approval from your boss to purchase article submission software and news and press release software. I also recommend that you submit your website to directories as soon as you have fixed your site. I seriously doubt it that your site will be excepted into Dmoz or similar human edited directories the way it is designed atm, so rather wait before you submit to them, only until you have fixed the issues I pointed out.

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## Dave A

Absolutely gobsmacked! Roelof - you are the master - we're not worthy!

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## IanF

Roelof
I echo Dave's comments. How much do you charge to analyse a website and give a report.

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## Chatmaster

Ian, my normal rate is R450/hour. However I am more than willing to do it for TFSA members at R250/hour. The amount of time taken to do an analysis however can be in the region of 30+ hours. All sites and market segments are different and it also depends on the size of the site and the amount of competition you have. 

I am not cheap to be honest but I am certainly not going to do something like this, half heartedly, I do it proper and then you know exactly where you stand and what to do to improve your Internet marketing. I also check for issues in terms of your hosting and server all the way to the retention of your customers. I also analyze your competitors to see what they are up to, to measure exactly how much money and effort you should put into kicking dust in their eyes. Although the report you will receive will only contain information  that you need to focus on and not all the stuff I gathered.

Part of my service will also include some suggestions on free or low cost conventional marketing techniques that you can use if I see some opportunities there.

If you take in account that you pay lets say 12k for your website to be designed, my services comes in relatively cheap I think!

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## Chatmaster

For some reason my earlier post dissappeared  :Embarrassment: 

Dave and Ian, thank you for the compliments. I am in good company though and surrounded by people I learn from everyday. Me being a master? I am not sure how to define a master. There are many people I look up to in this country that I know is a lot better than me, so please do not think I am special! Thanks again you guys have no idea how much this means to me!

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## IanF

Roelof
Thanks for the reply, it looks good. I must just do some research on my own first and will contact you.

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## Chatmaster

For which website are you looking to do so Ian? I can have look for you in the meantime?

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## IanF

> For which website are you looking to do so Ian? I can have look for you in the meantime?


Roelof www.printimage.co.za

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## RKS Computer Solutions

If anything a master Roelof, master of chat you be!!! hehe, great post, great wording to make it understandable and above all, all corners covered!!!

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## Rudi

I am a member of another forum where there is a smiley that falls flat on his back due to overwhelmingly good info or surprize... I would have put a couple of those smileys into this reply if I had access to them.

Roelof, this is the most comprehensive answer I have EVER ecieved on ANY forum, and I utterly commend and thank you for your time and effort in helping me with this info! It is going to take time to work through ALL the valuable ifo you provided and it will take more time to start fixing the multitude of problems you have identified. This is going to ge a long term project for me, but it will have high priorities. I will over time communicate with the CEO and others to convince them of the design flaws and the need to change it. Hold thumbs that it will be noted and accepted.

Again, Roelof.... thanks for the valued info. It is greatly appreciated!!

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## Chatmaster

Rudi once you feel you are ready, I would gladly carry on with the points of actually marketing the site and obtaining traffic etc. You are also most welcome and your appreciation is reward enough. Good luck with the task at hand, you know where to find me  :Big Grin:

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## Rudi

Roelof,

Quoted: >> Remove all onpage style sheets and link to them externally. The same goes for JavaScript.

Could you give me some idea how to do this?

I am familiar with .js and.css files and have attempted to create these off-page files so that the scripts do not clutter up my actual web page scripting. I have had success with one or two of the .js files and have put the functions scripting into these external files. However, I have struggled with some of the other scripts that add some animation on the page.

Could you give me some guidelines on how to link the .js file to the html? I have tried to use this method: direct link to the .js file...
<link href="JavaFiles/Billboard/Billboard.css" rel="stylesheet">
<script language="javascript" src="JavaFiles/Billboard/Billboard.js">
</script>

and this method....using the SPAN tags and an ID

<span id="CharHL1">MAXIMA INFORMATION</span></font>
<font size="5" color="#FFFFFF" face="Trebuchet MS">~</font></b></td>
<SCRIPT language="JavaScript">
      animate('CharHL1', 'yellow');
</SCRIPT>

Sometimes these work and other times not.??

My knowledge of javascripting is not so hot...I rely almost entirely on the FrontPage design.

Any guidlines will be helpful...cheers

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## Chatmaster

Hi Rudi

Sorry for replying late but I was out of action for a couple of days. Had way to much work to do.

In terms of including Styles.
Copy the following code to notepad and save it as styles.css in your root folder.



> #pscroller1{
> width: 251px;
> height: 90px;
> border: 1px solid #FFCC00;
> padding: 5px;
> background-color: #DEDEEF;
> font: bold 10px Trebuchet MS;
> text-align:left
> }


Now include the file within your body tags using the following code.




> <link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" type="text/css">


The JavaScript you can include as follows.

Copy the following code and the others that are in your website into notepad and save it as scrollscript.js




> var pausecontent=new Array()
> pausecontent[0]='What is Life Skills?<br />Life (Soft) Skills are all those skills (outside the ordinary work or technical skills training) needed by any individual to obtain maximum success and happiness in every aspect of life.'
> pausecontent[1]='Our Next Empower Hour<br />Join us for our next Empower Hour,<br />5 March @ 19H00...'
> pausecontent[2]='<a href="Pics-CapeTown.htm">Saldanha Training Photos</a><br />See a couple of photos from recent training at Saldanha...'
> pausecontent[3]='<a href="Training.htm">Training Courses We Offer</a><br />View our detailed list of courses including: Time Management, Motivational Management, Stress Management and Conflict Management...'
> pausecontent[4]='Mentoring Meetings<br />Every Thursday @ 19H00. Contact Tiaan for details @ 083 293-4585'
> pausecontent[5]='What is a Life Coach?<br />A person commissioned to motivate, teach and advise people (individuals & groups) to master the practice of generic success and happiness enhancing skills and principles, called Life Skills.'
> pausecontent[6]='<a href="Motivational-Talks.htm">Life Skills Motivational Talks</a><br />View our comprehensive list of talks which includes: Achievers Attitudes, Teamwork, Goal Setting and Focussed Operations...'
> pausecontent[7]='MAXIMA is presently an established, successful and reputable company, with a growing team of competent Life Coaches and supportive staff, as well as an impressive loyal and happy corporate and individual client base.'
> pausecontent[8]='View Our Services To You<br />Maxima provides a wide range of different services to you. See the list <a href="Introduction.htm#Services">here</a>...'


Each JavaScript file must be created in the same way and named according to it's function then you can reference the file as follows.




> <script language="JavaScript1.2" src="scrollscript.js">


In terms of naming conventions I suggest that you create a folder called scripts in your website's root and reference all the files from that folder. For the styles.css folder I suggest you create a folder called 'styles' and reference the .css files from there. In that case just change the path to styles/styles.css and scripts/scrollscript.js this will make it easier to find every time you want to change something.

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