Forget the Search Engine – Marketing Methods for the Web

The title should be “Forget the Search Engine…for a moment” as Search Engines generate a huge amount of traffic if you use them right.  What we are going to look at here are the marketing techniques that you should also be running alongside the mainstream SEO.  Too often the SEO tail starts to wag the marketing dog and needs to be placed back in it’s kennel from time to time, especially as you should be focusing on building a web site for humans and not for a search engine algorithm.

As soon as web marketing is mentioned, SEO gets mentioned as if it was a mantra and your site will die a slow death without it.  SEO experts have become a huge cottage industry, so much so that  site owners forget the basics about drawing in customers and that SEO is important only as  part of a broader marketing and advertising strategy.  Would you place all of your marketing eggs in one basket with an offline business?  Of course not !  So why would you do it with an online one?

Non-search engine methods for attracting traffic to your site revolve around creating a link to your website of one form or another.  SEO with good link building are essential components for traffic generation and one does not operate in isolation from the other.  We are going to look at some of the non search engine marketing methods you can use to help drive targeted traffic to your website but bear in mind, that just as you should not use SEO on it’s own, neither should these techniques.

Email Campaigns & Newsletters

Spamming is a BIG NO ! 

That is rule number one with email campaigns and one hint of spamming and all your website marketing can end up down the toilet. That being said, there is nothing wrong with emailing information to email addresses that subscribe to such approaches.  Email lists that are compiled from users opting in to your site subscription offer the best results.  You can also buy lists of email addresses that have been gathered by third party companies who have obtained opt-in permission from the users to receive marketing offers.

Direct email campaigns are high volume and low return exercises.  Response rates of less than 1% are the norm and despite the claims that an email address owner has opted in, you walk a finely perceived line in terms of being viewed as a spammer.

Informing email subscribers in the form of a newsletter used for constructive and informative communication provides an opportunity to generate regular traffic to your website with news of special offers and deals.  Combining newsletter communications with links to landing pages on your website will help you obtain the best results for both direct traffic generation and search engine ranking for your additional content.

Forum Posting

If you are in the widget industry then find forums and message boards that handle widget issues.  Contribute to the discussions that you find there and every time you do, include a link to a relevant part of your website that can help deal with the issues raised or offer a product that is being searched for.  Not only will you receive traffic in response to your posting (providing you are being relevant) you will also be enhancing your link rating which again, helps with the search engines.

Many forums have rules on what can and cannot be posted.  Some forums prohibit link backs or any form of commercial promotion and take drastic action to enforce their rules which may well get you banned.  Make sure you abide by the rules and if you cannot post a link as part of a message thread, then approach the moderators or site owners with an offer of a discount for their members and have them post the link in their own way.

Blogs

There is no other technique on the web to generate traffic than a well written, well managed and informative blog.

That is a pretty bold statement to make however I stand by it and here’s why.

Blogging satisfies the demand for surfers to have refreshed and up to date content.  As a story unfolds users will subscribe to the blog to see what is being posted up next while other subscribers may just like the style.  Commercial blog posts will include several links in each post back to the main website providing a conduit for qualified users to look at a particular product or service.  Why would they follow such a link?  Simply because they were interested in doing so by the blog post itself.

You don’t need to run your own blog either.  There are millions of blogs out there that allow you to comment on their posts and so join the discussion that a good blog post should look to provoke.  That provides you with an opportunity once again to link back to your website within the body of your comment but try again to offer something that is relevant to the discussion thread.  If your product or service can satisfy a need that is being highlighted by the blog post then you are more likely to receive that much more traffic.

There is a lot of debate in the blogosphere about the “morality” of paid posts, that is, where you pay a well known blogger to write about your site and offering.  There is nothing wrong in terms of affecting your search engine rankings by doing this and if a blogger is prepared to write about you and you are prepared to pay, that’s the free market in operation.

Social Networking & Bookmarking Sites

Unless you have been living in a cave for the last couple of years, you will have heard of MySpace, probably the best example of a social networking site at the moment but there are others.  As with many things, social networking sites have followed a well trodden path of being a youthful spotty teenager fad that has been adopted by the older business community as a conduit to getting themselves and their business noticed. 

I can provide an excellent example of a MySpace supported website that has virtually no search engine traffic – http://www.circusenvyband.com – Circust Envy band is a UK band who have a MySpace profile that they keep updated rather like a blog.   This is a successful website with little search engine marketing!

Bookmarking sites take a slightly different approach to building a community in that they act as an aggregator of news and happenings-of-note postings that the rest of the community either rates as newsworthy (and so sending it up the ranks and getting more exposure) or voting it down (and effectively burying the item).  Digg is probably the best example and some marketeers actively look to promote their sites with them but you need to be aware. If you get caught artificially manipulating the voting system, say by creating multiple accounts, expect to find yourself banned from using the site.

Write an eBook

There is nothing that people like better than free stuff!

Write an eBook on whatever area of expertise you cover and have it converted into eBook format and offer it for free to whoever wants it.  Within the eBook there will of course be plenty of links and plugs for you and your website and an opportunity to provide in depth information and reasons why customers need your products and services and how they can be used.

There is no excuse not to become an author as there is an army of ghostwriters who will deliver an excellent eBook for a fee that will rival the cost of advertising in the local newspaper.  There is also nothing better than potential customers and the general community seeing your name as the author on a book – that will mark you out as an expert and can be leveraged for other things such as being an “expert commentator” for the press and other discussion media.

Good Old Fashioned Link Building

The last technique we will cover here is simply that – good old fashioned link building.

You sell widgets in Glasgow but you get traffic from customers in London who will not buy from you.  Waste of traffic and a waste of web budget if you do nothing about that.  It makes a lot of sense to look for reciprocal link arrangements with websites that are in your line of business but where you are not competing by virtue of geography.  You’re simply referring customers to one another and a step further on with this is an affiliate marketing scheme.

Think for a moment about how often you see accountants and solicitors passing clients between each other.  Think about mortgage brokers and estate agents working hand in hand.  Receiving referrals is the best source of business you can get as it tends to provide motivated, qualified buyers from a trusted source.  Usually there is a commission paid to whoever refers the business on and that is the basis of an affiliate marketing scheme.

Taking this paid referral system to the web simply involves working out a commission system for other website owners who refer business to you.  Some of this works on a pay-per-click basis or there is a commission paid on a sale being made, but the mechanics are pretty much the same online as in the real world and you get a whole set of links back to your website.

Summary

We have touched upon some of the primary non search engine marketing methods but by no means have we exhausted them all.  We have not touched upon paid link advertising or Google AdWords and the like but nevertheless they are out there.  What we have tried to do is demonstrate that as soon as you mention “website” your marketing and business sense should not fly out the window at the sound of the words “Search Engine Optimisation” or “SEO”.

Marketing methods and techniques are only limited by your own ingenuity and imagination.

Successful, profitable websites have three things in common – they have great SEO, they have great non-SEO marketing and they have a great website offering for users – ignore any one of these three at the risk of your success.

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