Q: Why is website marketing important?

A: At present the World Wide Web consists of over 10 billion unique web pages! Furthermore, this number is growing at an exponential rate. Most of us use search engines to find relevant information on the Web. While search engines haven’t indexed every existing web page (even the largest have indexed only around 4 billion web pages) there are still thousands of websites that your site is competing against every time someone performs a web search.

There is obviously no point spending hundreds or even thousands of pounds on creating your website unless people actually use it. This normally means finding it in the first place - usually via search engines. You should therefore spend some time and effort on marketing your website so that people can actually find it via search engines (in the top 30 results at least - the higher the better). Otherwise they will find one of your competitors instead.

Q: How can I attract extra visitors to my website?

A: There are a number of ways of increasing website traffic. The five main ways that we can help with are optimising your current website for search engines, creating doorway pages, submitting your website to search engines, increasing the number of incoming links to your website and using pay per click marketing. These are all forms of online marketing.

In addition, you could use traditional forms of off-line marketing, such as word-of-mouth, advertising in relevant magazines and papers, handing out flyers/ business cards and even advertising on TV and radio (obviously restricted to larger companies). Normally, if you want to advertise a website and increase your traffic levels, you will find that online marketing such as our website marketing techniques will be far more cost-effective than traditional forms of marketing.

Q: What is search engine optimisation / website optimisation?

A: Search engine optimisation (SEO) or website optimisation refers to the process of getting your website to rank highly on search engines for popular terms that are relevant to your business - thereby attracting extra visitors that are interested in what you have to offer. This optimisation is achieved by using appropriately optimised titles, meta-tags, image lables, links, text content and other techniques.

Q: What are doorway pages?

A: Doorway pages are pages that have been designed to rank highly on search engines for one particular term. They can be an effective way of increasing targeted traffic to your website if created correctly.

Q: What do these acronyms stand for?

SEO = Search Engine Optimisation
PPC = Pay Per Click (Advertising) 
CPC = Cost Per Click

Q: Should I use frames for my website?

A: No. It is definitely better to avoid using frames for your site. Put simply, the reason is that the HTML source code for your framed page will not be as text-rich as a similar page that does not use frames - and it is this text content that search engines heavily rely on to rank your site.

If you really must use frames (or it would be expensive to re-design your site), then using a <noframes> tag within your frameset to add text content can help. Pages should also be optimised for title and meta-tags (as should any non-framed pages). Creating some additional non-framed pages would also be beneficial. 

Q: Should I use Flash for my website?

Using Flash in itself is not a problem, the problem lies with how and where it is used. Because Flash pages normally contain very little text content for search engines to index, they are unlikely to achieve high rankings. Flash pages also normally contain few links for search engines to follow. These are major problems, especially when you use Flash as an introductory page (aka a “Splash” page) for your website. One solution is to create an additional non-Flash HTML page and let the user choose which one they wish to view. The non-Flash HTML page will obviously be beneficial for your web rankings. Any Flash pages that you do use should contain keyword rich content and optimised titles and meta-tags, plus standard HTML links to the rest of your site or to a site map.

Q: Will my dynamic pages get indexed by search engines?

Most dynamic pages are database-generated and contain one of the following symbols as part of the dynamic URL:        ?  & cgi-bin  .cgi  $ =  + %

While search engines such as Google and Alltheweb don’t normally have problems indexing URLs that contain just one of the symbols above, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to index URLs with more than one of the above symbols. (The basic reason for this is that they are less sure whether the page contains unique content and they don’t want to index pages with identical content).

Making dynamic pages search engine friendly therefore involves reducing the number of parameters contained in the URL - ideally limiting them to just one. You could also add extra static HTML pages to your site, pay to add your site to search engines (they will then accept your dynamic pages quite happily) or use pay per click (PPC) advertising to direct visitors to your dynamic pages.

Q: What are “bad” website marketing techniques that should be avoided?

A: Any type of website spam will not be viewed favourably by search engines. Spaming techniques include optimising pages for words that are not related to your site, using invisible text, and keyword stacking (repeating the same word several times in a row). Using artificial link farms and web rings to boost your number of incoming links should also be avoided. Generally speaking, creating content on a web page that is of no actual use or interest to website visitors - content that has only been designed for search engines - should be avoided.

Q: Do you guarantee search engine positions?

A: It is impossible for any website marketing company to guarantee search engine positions for websites because the rankings rely on something that we have no control over - the search engines themselves. Search Engines constantly change the algorithms they use to determine rankings - the aim being to provide ever-more relevant content to their users. Using good practice search engine optimisation techniques will however provide you with a significant advantage over websites that are not optimised, and should normally get you near the top of the rankings and significantly increase your web traffic levels.

It is also worth remembering that rankings in themselves don’t mean much. If you are ranked No.1 for a particular phrase but no-one is actually using that phrase on search engines then your ranking won’t generate any extra visitors, which is what it is all about at the end of the day. What you want is high rankings for popular search phrases, rather than No. 1 rankings for little-used search phrases.

The only way of actually achieving guaranteed top positions on search engines is by using Pay Per Click marketing, but in this case you can never be guaranteed how much it will cost to stay at the top. Someone could come along at any point and offer a higher pay-per-click rate than yours to be listed as No. 1.

Q: Do you own any websites that use your own internet marketing techniques and that make money?

A: Yes, we run a number of travel and shopping-related websites that generate income on a daily basis from sale referrals.

Q: I still have a question related to website marketing - can you help?

A: Possibly. Send your question to faqs@ukwebsitemarketing.com and we will try to provide an answer.

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