Real World Computing
Marketing the right way
Google is the main reason that, at NlightN, we never create websites using Flash: a Flash-based website is essentially invisible to Google, as its spiders can't make their way through the various links. The only way around this is to have both Flash and HTML versions of your site, but if it's possible to produce your site using HTML only, why bother with the Flash? Regular readers will know that I'm a Flash specialist, but that doesn't make me blind to its limitations. We use Flash extensively within our sites to deliver specific content - such as e-learning, online tests and video clips - but the framework of our sites is always entirely HTML, whether static pages or PHP-generated ones.
My advice is to develop a good-quality HTML-based site and concentrate your marketing efforts on Google's not-so-secret weapon, AdWords. Indeed, the success of Passyourtheory is based largely on three marketing planks - Google AdWords, autoresponders and referrals - of which AdWords is the most complex and can be a dangerous weapon if you're not careful. Fortunately, you can set a daily maximum budget, and I advise that this should be in single figures to begin with so you can experiment with the various settings in relative safety.
As you'll probably know, AdWords are those search listings that appear at the top right of a Google results page under the heading Sponsored Links. As an advertiser, I tell AdWords which keywords I want to respond to, how much I'm prepared to pay for each click, and which ad to display. Google then displays my advert along with those of other advertisers. Many books have been written about how to get the most out of AdWords, and I'd recommend you head over to www.perrymarshall.com and download his beginner's guide. However, here are my own top-five tips:
1. Pick your keywords carefully. For example, if you're a specialist bookseller, you'll encounter huge competition with a keyword as broad as "book", so come up with some combination that will only be seen by people interested in what you stock. If you sell cookery books, try "Jamie Oliver book" rather than just "book". Google offers a tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) to help with keyword suggestions, but if you're really serious then consider a specialised tool such as AdWord Accelerator (www.adwordaccelerator.com/v2). I've been using this for a couple of years now and have found it absolutely invaluable, as it not only helps generate keywords, but also estimates how much you need to bid to achieve a particular ranking.
2. Make sure you have a different ad (or group of ads) for each group of keywords. Broadly speaking, Google decides how high up the sponsored listings you'll appear partly on how much you're prepared to pay and also, crucially, on how closely your ad matches the search term. As always, Google rewards relevance, so if a searcher types "Jamie Oliver book" they should see a different ad to someone who types "cookery book". You can guess that such a potential customer wants to buy Oliver's latest book, so refer to it in the ad and perhaps even include the price. If they typed "cookery book", they need to see an ad that's more general.
3. It's often worthwhile to send your visitors to a specific page within your website related to the ad, say, a page listing Jamie Oliver books. Visitors like this, as you're presenting them with exactly what they want, and it makes it much more likely that they'll simply purchase on impulse.
