May 2, 2006

How to increase your online sales for free

by Brian Turner

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How to increase your online sales for free

The internet is a fact of life in the UK, with over 40 million households in Britain now subscribed to broadband.

Ecommerce and online sales continue to boom while the high street declines, but connecting with potential customers online can be a challenge for any business.

However, there are ways in which you can much more easily capture sales from the internet – search engines.

When someone is looking to buy a product online, they will commonly use a search engine such as Google to locate potential sellers.

They will then make a purchasing decision based on the top listed sites.

Getting listed at the top of search engine results – to capture commercial searches and the lucrative sales traffic they can deliver – may seem like a challenge.

This is a service often provided by Search Engine Optimisation companies. If you need more information on what that mean, there’s more information here: A Basic Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation

But there are actually some very simple things you can do to help yourself.

Forget all about search engine submission software and services – you don’t need them. All you need for search engines to find you is links.

Links

The first thing you need to bear in mind is whether your website is search engine friendly in the first place.

This is certainly helpful in your cause, but even search engine un-friendly websites can still dominate commercial search traffic.

The secret is links to your website.

Search engines overwhelmingly rely on links from websites for some part of their ranking algorithm.

The theory is, that if lots of websites, especially respectable ones, all link to your website – then your website must be important.

They then look at the text in the link – which may be products and/or services you provide – and decide that your website must therefore be important for those products and/or services.

At this point, many small businesses stop. It can seem hard to get those links, to make your website seem especially important for your own products/services.

I’ll show you how easy it can be.

How to get links

This isn’t a comprehensive list of sources of links – but it should help get you started.

TIP: When you’ve read this article, check out this slightly more advanced article on link building: Introduction to Link Building

1. Directories

Directories are a place where you can buy links on pages associated with your business type.

Direct traffic from directories will often be minimal – but if you can get your website listed on a number of directories, just one sale could more than justify the time and cost of doing so.

Additionally, being listed in a number of directories can help provide links that search engines can follow to find your website.

Not only that, your directory listings would normally be provided on pages only about the types of products/services you provide.

TIP: There are a lot of general directories out there, but there are also a growing number of niche directories. Don’t over look these.

Where to find:

A list of general web directories is posted here: Web Directories
You can also find niche directories here: Niche Directories

2. Articles

Articles have become an increasingly popular way to gain links to your website.

Not only that, but by positioning yourself as someone who knows about your business field, you can develop a reputation that can potentially attract further business.

You don’t have to write anything overtly technical – simply introduce and describe aspects of your business that may interest a potential reader.

You can then add a link to your business website at the end of the article, which can help search engines associate your website with the topic you are writing about.

TIP: If you feel you don’t have time or the ability to write articles and submit them, you can always advertise for such services: Classifieds

Where to find:

A starter list of websites that publish articles can be found here: Article Submissions Sites

Forums

A lot of online forums and communities have sprung up all around the internet.

These can be very good places to network and connect with suppliers/distributors as well as buyers/consumers.

By posting constructively as a member of such communities, you can develop a reputation in your business online.

However, they can also be a good place to build links back to your websites.

For a start, most forums allow you to place a link to your website in your profile.

Additionally, you can often write a “signature” to accompany all of your posts, where you can place your links. Although search engines may not place too much weight on these types of links, again, you can get human users clicking through because they like how you post.

There are also a couple more sneaky way to leverage forums for links.

The first is that many online communities will invite you to introduce yourself. This is where you can state the company you represent, and include a link back to it.

The second is that a number of forums will allow advertising in specified boards – so at periodic intervals, you can posts advertising for your website on these.

TIP: Remember, there are a lot of forums out there – try and join as many as you can to get more links.

TIP: You could also find running a support forum on your own site allows you to better work with customer-relations.

Where to find:

Use search engines to find online communities built around your general business area, by using both generic and more specific keywords in a search, especially including any of the following words: forum, forums, boards, bbs, board, messageboard.

Yahoo! is probably the best search engine to us for this.

4. Advertising

Advertising is another way in which you can generate lots of links to your website.

Ideally, you can try and find websites in your business area, and then email the webmaster of the website, asking about advertising rates.

Try to ensure any such advert is as visible as possible for human users, but also make sure that the ads are also search engine friendly.

TIP: Try and find lots of websites to advertise on, rather than just one or two, if possible – search engines are believed to see link from many different websites as a more powerful recommendation, than lots of links from just one or two websites.

Where to find:

You can locate different websites in your business area by searching online, or by general awareness of your industry. Also check out if any of your competitors are advertising anywhere in this way, by using the link:domain.com search tool in Yahoo!

For example: link:platinax.co.uk Simply swap platinax.co.uk for your own domain name.

Also – you can look to buy advertising packages from online marketing companies. Britecorp offers advertising on an increasing number of websites in different business areas – ask them if they can find a package to help you: Britecorp Internet Marketing

5. Blogs

A blog is ordinarily an online journal.

However, a blog on your business site becomes a communications, public relations, business publishing, and marketing tool – all in one.

And it can also generate links to your site, too.

Blog software loves to connect to one another – one blog writing about another will often automatically publish a link to itself on the other blog, to let people know it is being discussed.

So if you write about different events in your field of business, you can find yourself getting links from other blogs in that same field.

There are also blog aggregator services, which try and send visitors to blogs about specific subjects.

TIP: Maintaining a blog can be tiring and time-consuming, so make sure you pace yourself from the start.

TIP: Consider very carefully the type of software you wish to use – two of the major software platforms are reviewed here: Blog Software Platforms

Where to find:

Look at places such as Technorati to locate other blogs, or bloglines.

6. Link Exchanges

A note about exchanging links with other websites.

Link exchanges are an old method of developing links to a website.

However, link exchanges very time-consuming to develop.

Also, most webmasters who receive link exchanges consider thema nuisance at best.

And most of the webmasters who send link exchanges appear to be developing low quality websites that you really don’t want to be associated with.

You should also be aware that Google appears to be especially aggressive in trying to exclude link exchanges from its search results.

Which means all that time and effort could be in vain anyway.

Conclusion

Building links to your website simply takes a little time and effort to do.

But it remains an activity that is very accessible if you wish to at least do something.

For many small businesses, it is often worth investing a few hours setting up links to your website yourself.

Certainly it should prove more useful to you than search engine submission software – that at best, can only tell search engines that you exist, but cannot tell search engines if your website is actually important or not – that’s what links are for.

If you would rather someone else build your links for you, then ask Brian at Britecorp how he can help manage your link building program for you.

Discuss this in the Internet Business forums

Story link: How to increase your online sales for free

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