MarketingSherpa.com : Practical News & Case Studies on Internet Advertising, Marketing & PR Here is a fabulous case study about testing and retesting message. Plus there is some very insightful information on how to use search engines in your marketing mix.

NEVER answer to ANY spam message you receive! NEVER! Spammers look for email addresses that are actually working and want to know if someone is actually checking a mailbox. Once they find out that an email is valid, the commercial value of that address increases and your inbox will get full.

Seven Deadly Sins of Web Writing Read it, learn it, live it.

Let me guess…your inbox is flooded with contact requests from your website. Your phone lines are ringing off the hook because your latest online offer worked. And, you’re having to add capacity to handle all of the traffic that your website is receiving.

Well, isn’t that your reality? I’m sure you thought that by just putting up a website, traffic will flood in.

“If you build it, they will come.”

If you’re like most, it’s only a dream. Many website operators don’t know what works on their site and what doesn’t. They don’t understand how their sites cultivate prospects or generate sales. So, it’s time to get back to good old-fashioned marketing.

For all websites, success begins and ends with traffic. Sure, content is king. But first your users have to know that your website exists before any value can be derived from it. It’s no different in the retail world; shop owners have to have foot traffic to keep their store open.

There are many ways to promote your website and it’s address. But, for websites there is one crown jewel – the search engine.

According to a recent study, nearly 80% of first time website visitors navigated to those websites via a search engine. They are so important because they embody the essence of the web – the user is in control of the transaction.

At any time, day or night, someone can type in a phrase and have thousands of websites returned to them. But, over 50% of the time that user doesn’t go any further than the first 10 responses. Used correctly a sound search engine optimization program can be a gold mine for cultivating leads in the B2B world. The secret is in figuring out what those prospects are typing in to find your goods or services.

Once you’ve figured this out, you must re-program your website to include these phrases. But, not in the ways that most believe. The days of the “meta-keywords” are over. The search engines totally ignore them since they have been so misused in the past. They want to know what the pages are about and they use different clues in your site to tell them.

Along with search engine optimization, many other marketing tactics should be used to promote your website. Most people suffer from the Field of Dreams Syndrome – if you don’t promote it, they won’t come. You would be surprised how many companies forget to do just that because promotion is the key to beginning your traffic growth.

So what do you do when your traffic starts to go up?

Analyze it.

First, you have to gauge whether or not you’re getting the right traffic. This begins by using the website’s log analysis tool that you probably have as part of your hosting agreement. Any competent analyzer will give you a basic understanding of how many visitors are coming to your site, how they came to you and what they’re doing while they are there.

Another indicator is in the emails and phone calls that you are receiving. If your visitors are asking for things that you do not offer, they were probably misled by your content or what ever drew them to your site.

You must use your log analysis tool religiously. Go look for a statistic that is labeled something like – “time spent on site”. If that statistic is anything less than one minute, you have a real problem. In this situation this statistic indicates that your users aren’t sticking around. This can only mean one of two things – they are in the wrong place or the content is confusing.

Another statistic that can give you some clues is in a section called “referrers” or “search terms”. These will tell you which search engines your site visitors are coming from and what terms they typed in to find you. More importantly, it will tell you which phrases are working and which aren’t. Understanding this and making adjustments will help immensely with your targeting and traffic.

Now, we’ve got the traffic - and, more importantly, the right traffic. So, what next?

Call them to act.

Too many websites waste the time of their users by having a “splash screen” (that usually gets quickly bypassed) or welcoming them to their site. The statistics tell us that you have 15 seconds to make an impression. In other words – get busy selling.

Websites in their most basic form must do four things. First, it must validate you as a business. Then, it must explain what you do. Next, it must explain why someone should use you over your competition. And finally, it should clearly show them how to either engage in a transaction or initiate contact. It’s that simple.

Your homepages should be filled with information about your latest product or service offering. You should showcase your latest case study. There should be a place for users to view your Blog (you are blogging, aren’t you?). They should be prompted to subscribe to your email newsletter.

You should be doing all of these things. And, if you aren’t – why not?

Here are five tips to immediately improve your website and its traffic:

Make sure that all of the pages on your website DO NOT have the same title. Use key phrases that describe the content on the page.

• Swap links with your business associates, friends, clients and partners.
• Remove welcome messages and non-sales copy from the homepage. Start selling immediately.
• Give something of value away for free in exchange for an email address.
• Think like your user, not like you’re promoting your company.

Websites are a necessity in today’s business world. There are good ones and there are bad ones. Study what the good ones are doing and integrate their tactics into a marketing plan that helps promote your website. Don’t believe that “if you build it, they will come”. They have to know about it first – this isn’t the movies.

What is a blog? Well, Debbe Weil is trying to answer that question. Here is her try Top 20 definitions of blogging by Debbie Weil in WordBiz Report. Debbie writes about online copywriting and publishes a fine newsletter.

The cost of domain names (www.yourname.com) has dwindled down to nearly nothing these days. Companies like GoDaddy.com and Directi.com are offering dotcom’s for $12.99 or less per year.

In the past these domain names were usually bought so that you had some form of your company name and maybe you would buy an alternate domain name including a keyword or two (www.keywordphrase.com). Then all of these domain names would point to the same website.

Now, these low domain name costs force us to think not only offensively, but defensively, too.

We know that having keyword-rich domain names with dashes in them (www.your-keyword-phrase.com) is one of the BEST ways to influence your search engine rankings. And, with prices this low you can afford to corner your market on every keyword derivative that might be coveted by your competition.

Even if you are not interested in buying the name and hosting content for it, you might be interested in keeping your competition away from them. Buy them and tuck them away to maintain your competitive advantage.