Internet Marketing Guide

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Internet
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Internet Stats
Search Engine Optimization
Paid Placement
Link Popularity
Online Advertising
eMail Marketing (Newsletter Sources)
Website Promotion

Effective, Ongoing Promotion and Marketing + a quality, optimized, content-rich site = Website Success!

Internet Stats

Web User Stats and Trends

CyberAtlas http://cyberatlas.internet.com/ is the source for Internet statistics, market research, demographics and surveys. Find statistics on e-commerce, Internet advertising, and online populations from a variety of sources in one place.

Nation United States	Population 280.5 million	Internet Users 168 million (Nielsen//NetRatings)	Active Users 122.2 million (Jan. 2003, at-home)	ISPs 7,800

Average Web Usage
Week end of February 24, 2002, U.S.

Number of Sessions per Week	7
Number of Unique Sites Visited	20
Time Spent per Week	3: 44: 24
Time Spent During Surfing Session	33: 11
Duration of a Page viewed	00: 55
Active Internet Universe	80,296,720
Current Internet Universe Estimate	167,518,645

Global Internet Statistics (by Language) http://www.glreach.com/globstats/index.php3

U.S. Internet Population Continues to Grow

	Internet use in the United States is growing at a rate of 2 million new Internet users each month
	143 million Americans (54 percent of the population) used the Internet in September 2001
	26 percent increase over August 2000. Even more Americans, 174 million, use computers

Read the Home Buyer/Seller Profile (PDF file) from NAR

Nearly 40 Percent of Home Buyers Use Web
(Still searching for updated stats on Home Buyers and the Internet! Email me if you have a source)

	NAR's "2000 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers" found that 37 percent of all home buyers use the Internet to search for a home, an 18-fold increase in only four years.
	Eighty-seven percent of Web home shoppers use a real estate agent or broker, while 76 percent of traditional buyers work with an agent.
	Three-quarters of survey respondents said it was somewhat important for their real estate agent to be "Internet savvy.
	"Technology has created a new delivery channel for real estate services, not replaced old... most consumers still want a professional to interpret the data, negotiate the transaction, provide expert advice and close the sale or purchase of what's likely to be the largest transaction of their lives."

Register your domain name - branding Yourself.com

Search Engine Optimization

Web Design Considerations

	Content, content, content!
	Sticky applications - content that increases the appeal, usefulness, traffic and eventually the stickiness of your website. Changing content is the driving force behind return visits to a website.
	Easy to navigate
	Fast-loading, well-designed pages
	Content with keyword relevancy and density
	Pages optimized for main search engines (meta tags, titles, descriptions)

Search Engine Optimization Resources
http://searchenginewatch.com/resources/design.html
Links to sites that deal specifically with the issue of optimizing pages for search engines

Submit your website to:

	search engines Add URL Quick links
	major directories
	industry specific directories
	general directories

Search Engine Submission Tips http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/index.html
This section of Search Engine Watch (formerly called A Webmaster's Guide To Search Engines) is primarily for webmasters, site owners and web marketers. It covers search engine submission, placement and marketing issues. It explains how search engines find and rank web pages, with an emphasis on what webmasters can do to improve their search engine rankings by properly submitting, using better page design, HTML meta tags, and other tips.

Checking Your URL
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/checkurl.html
Find out how to check to verify if your URL (yourname.com) is listed in various search engines

Market Leap
http://www2.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm
Verify your website's placement in 40 of the Internet's Top Search Engines and Directories.

Free for all (FFA) links/Submission services are not recommended:

	More is not necessarily better
	90-95% of all traffic is generated from top 10-20 search engines
	Your Result is SPAM email (3-400) emails in your mailbox!

Submit Your Website to the Top Search Engines Quick link page for adding your URL manually to the major search engines and directories

Read about search engine trends at SearchEngineWatch.com

More search engine resources

Real Estate Website Marketing Guide

Paid Placement/Pay-per-click search engines

To Pay or Not Pay for Search Engine Placement?

Paying for placement is a quick way to drive more traffic to your website. Before you jump in to the bidding game, you must do your homework and develop a well-defined game plan. Paid placement search engines guarantee your site will be listed under the specific keyword or phrases you select and make a bid on. Your account is charged the "amount bid" every time someone clicks through to your website from the search engine results page where your site appears.

Overture.com (Formerly GoTo.com) is the leader of the Paid Placement search engines. Overture's search results appear on AOL, Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, Netscape, HotBot. These search engines usually display the search results for a particular keyword search with the top 3 "sponsored" or "featured" sites listed first. Before you jump head first in to the bidding game - here are some critical questions to answer:

	What is your advertising budget? How much do you want to invest?
	What keyword(s) should you bid on?
	Are your web pages optimized for your selected keywords?
	Converting the click-throughs to prospects and clients - How effective is your website at capturing the prospects email or better yet, getting the prospective client to contact you for more info, to list or buy real estate?
	What is your email follow-up or action plan?
	Do you have other systems in place to contact and stay in touch with prospects?

Overture.com now requires that you have an account with them before you can use these valuable tools:

	Search Term Suggestion Tool - find out how many times a a keyword or phrase was searched on for previous month and related searches
	Get Current Bid Tool - tells you the current bid for a specific keyword term and the current listings
	Maximize your click-throughs

CompareYourClicks.com, a free site that will take any keyword or phrase you type in and produce a comparison chart of the top bids in 9 of the PPC search engines including Overture, FindWhat, Sprinks, Bay9, and more.

Recommended Articles:

...Three Simple Bidding Strategies
http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue55/page1.html

Buying Your Way In To Search Engines
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/paid.html

Pay For Placement?
http://searchenginewatch.com/resources/paid-listings.html

Paid Listings Search Engines
http://searchenginewatch.com/links/paid.html

Pay Per Click Search Engines .com
aims to review all the pay per click search engines.

Google's List of Pay Per Click Search Engines

Link Popularity

	Link popularity (who and how many other websites link to you) has become a key factor used by several major search engines (including Yahoo, Google, AltaVista) in their search rankings.
	TIP: Have about a 25 word, well-thought-out description of your site already written and readily available in a text file on your desktop so you can copy and paste when a description of your site is allowed/requested. Also have the Site Title and complete URL ready to cut and paste.
	Start building target market links - go to the link below for a list of sites and directories that link to Realtors and your website.

Real Estate Web Guide

	Reciprocal linking/banner exchanges with others - TIP: Do a keyword search relevant to or complementing your website and solicit reciprocal links from the best sites that come up in your searches in various top search engines
	Read this Article: What Your Link Request Should Contain and Why http://www.clickz.com/linking/build_links/article.php/831971

Link Popularity update includes info on Paid Submissions, Paid & Free Reciprocal Links to build your Link popularity:
www.advancedaccess.com/linkpop/

How Search Engines Use Link Analysis
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/01/sd1219-links.html

Measuring Link Popularity
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/popularity.html

FREE Link Popularity Tools
http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

http://www.linkpopularitycheck.com/

Reciprocal Link Tools
Turbo Link
http://www.pwqsoft.com/link/web-site-traffic-optimization-feature.htm

http://www.cyber-robotics.com/index.htm an easy-to-use, intelligent, internet robot that builds a link directory and creates reciprocal links for your web site.

Buying Online Advertising

	Make your website part of one or more of the many "internet malls"
	Purchase Banner advertising
	Buy ad space in successful e-zines and Newsletters with established, targeted subscribers
	Classified ads (yahoo, AOL, etc)
	Yellow Pages
	Alternative solutions for advertising online include using special advertising services, such as DoubleClick http://www.doubleclick.com, to coordinate banner exchanges.

Real Estate specific directories and websites

Advertising Online About.com guide

More Promotion & Marketing links

E-Marketing Strategies

E-mail Marketing

e-Everything! Include your e-mail and web address on everything.... all your printed literature, letterhead, business cards and display advertising. Use your domain name for your business e-mail address (you@yourname.com). You can set it up with your web host and have all the emails forwarded to the account you use most often (AOL, MSN, your ISP).

e-Newsletters Opt-in (permission-based with the ability to subscribe/unsubscribe) mailing list/newsletter subscription

	Realty Times Newsletter The Real Estate Update $200/yr https://realtytimes.com/reu_signup.htm?open&promo=
	Inman News Features - Website content and e-newsletter. Agent package starts at $150 for a six-month subscription. http://www.inman.com/agent.asp
	RealEstateABC.com - FREE Content and Paid Content/Newsletter for $99/yr
	SaneMarketing.com - FREE Personalized Newsletter For Your Internet Farm http://sanemarketing.com/ezine-builder.html

Visit these websites for free content for your newsletter or website:
ezinearticles.com
Small Business Wizards
IdeaMarketers.com
Web Design Wisdom
Website 101

	e-Signatures Develop a "signature" mini-ad attached to all your outgoing e-mail messages containing at your URL, e-mail address, basic contact info, slogan
	e-Templates Be more efficient by using templates for specific emails you use most often with Top Producer or Outlook.
	e-Autoresponders Usually available to set-up through your web host. Respond immediately to email inquiries with a quick, pre-written email.
	e-Mail campaigns and action plans Let technology work for you! Create a follow-up plan for prospects, listings, buyers, referrals, sphere of influence and implement using Top Producer, Outlook, MailLoop, or other suitable contact management software.

eMail Marketing Products

Advanced Access Intellicards

Top Producer Hot Marketer

Website Promotion

Web Cards Promote your website by getting a postcard version of your website for your traditional mailings (farming, just listed/sold, etc.)
Click here to get FREE samples of Web Cards

	Give customers a good reason to visit by offering them something (free offers, reports, tip of the day, week, etc)
	Become active in several of the thousands of Internet newsgroups and mailing lists - use these search tools to find forums, newsgroups, and mailing lists: http://groups.google.com/ http://www.tile.net/news/ http://www.izwa.co.za/demo/lisztnews.html http://groups.yahoo.com/
	Consider magnetic car signs with your web address
	Include unique content on your site. A site that contains large amounts of information (not readily available elsewhere) directly related to the product or service being sold may be far more successful than one that that only offers a product or service.
	Are you able to write articles on subjects related to your visitor's interests or can you offer to publish other works in exchange for exposure?
	Submit your articles to target market e-zines and newsletters
	Can you provide on-line instructions, how-to guides, tips and tricks, information pages, etc.?
	What can be done to add value to products and services?
	The addition of free bonuses, lifetime warranties, free shipping and handling, upgrades, etc. will often be perceived by the consumer as value-added especially if a dollar value can be attached to these extra.

More Website Promotion Resources

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