The Top Ten Steps to Springboarding Your eBusiness - Part 2

by Kamau Austin

Published on this site: October 7th, 2005 - See more articles from this month

Search engines, eBay, ezines, affiliate marketing, viral marketing, blogs, and now RSS feeds are heavily promoted by net gurus. However, how do you get a handle on where to begin in your ecommerce marketing?

In Part 1 of this article I suggested avoiding information overload in your initial efforts with Internet marketing. Furthermore to avoid information overload I advise ten essential steps in spring boarding your eBusiness to unstoppable success in this 2-part article.

These ten steps seek to simplify the core essential strategies and tasks new Internet marketers should do to jump-start their businesses before taking on more advanced tactics.

Too many advanced Internet marketing concepts can be confusing for new Internet marketers. Even experienced Internet marketers can lose their way if they are unfocused with too many advanced techniques in e-marketing.

You won't be off track if you keep it simple, and focus on these core basics when you first start out in web marketing.

If you missed the first 5 steps you can see them at the Search Engine Plan Blog at... http://www.SearchEnginePlan.com/blogs/seoblog.htm

These last 5 steps will further you along the road to selling online in record time.

1. Test Your Website's Sales and Subscriber Conversion Rates with Google's Adwords.
   
   Buy Google Adwords and test your sales and email subscription conversion rates while you optimize your site. This way you will know in ten minutes if your site is setup to convert site visitors into subscribers and eventually customers.
   
   Once your conversion rates for subscribers (10% or more) and customers (at least .5%) are at a promising level you can decide to invest or focus on search engine optimization. It takes more work to obtain top high rankings in organic listings of search engines.
   
   Therefore you should test your sites sales and subscriber conversions first with Google Adwords, then you can determine if it is worth investing in long term SEO.
   
2. Put Up a Preliminary Website ASAP
   
   Don't wait for the perfect web site before you upload your site to the Internet. Put up a preliminary website first with some basic information and start promoting.
   
   Buy or trade links with established websites already in Google's database. This will get your site indexed quickly.
   
   On the other hand you could post provocative or informative comments on a popular blog, which allows you to link back to your site. The links from established sites or blogs will help Google and Yahoo to send their spiders to find and index your site.
   
   Your goal is to get listed with a preliminary site of (5-10 pages) to get the clock ticking in your favor. This is because Google has delay filters AKA Google Sandbox on new sites for about 3 to 6 months.
   
   Therefore, you want a jump-start to eventually obtain a higher ranking. This strategy will get the clock ticking ASAP in your favor with a timelier high ranking.
   
   Focus on this preliminary strategy to get you in the search engines much quicker than waiting two to six months to perfect your website.
   
3. Optimize for the Search Engines in Your Planning Phases
   
   One of the biggest mistakes new website owners make is paying for or developing razzle-dazzle websites few people will ever find. This is because too many web designers focus on creating visually stunning sites.
   
   However these visually stunning and animated sites are usually incompatible with search engine's algorithms and their indexing.
   
   Others make the mistake of designing and then attempting to optimize their sites. Actually your site should be optimized in the design phase.
   
   If you design with SEO in mind you will avoid having to redesign your website to rank well in the search engines.
   
   Have your site optimized in your planning stages and you should start to see search engine traffic in three to six months.
   
4. Maintain Your Optimization with an Ongoing Link Campaign
   
   Get a good link campaign going with other related sites. Make sure you use your keywords in your link or anchor text (very important).
   
   Maintaining an ongoing link campaign is necessary to keep your search engine rankings high. Moreover, it can also have a viral and traffic generating impact.
   
   Modern search engines still measure link popularity and reputation as important parts of their algorithms. Link popularity focuses on the number and quality of your incoming links.
   
   Link reputation is essentially what other sites indicate about your site in the anchor (AKA link text) and surrounding link content.
   
5. Master Content Marketing
   
   Write some articles on topics of interest in your industry. Have them distributed in article directories in categories related to your industry (this you can start now). Your articles will create links to your site.
   
   Articles do 4 things:
   
   1. Brand you as an expert;
   2. increase your traffic and visibility;
   3. help with your link popularity for higher search engine rankings; and
   4. leverage your promotional efforts with other web masters looking for good content (working the magic of viral marketing).

Before you become engaged in the more advanced marketing strategies like RSS, affiliate marketing, application development, or joint ventures make sure you have these more basic top ten essential steps in place. These Top Ten Steps will certainly spring board your ebusiness and help you in your efforts to Sell Online in Record Time!

Kamau Austin helps businesses develop search engine friendly sites as sales tools to build their business. He is publisher or http://www.SearchEnginePlan.com and the author of "Always On Top" How to get the highest search engine ranking for your website... every time! Pick up his book at http://www.AlwaysOnTopthebook.com