In online business, a large amount of your marketing efforts are directed at bringing traffic into your dropshipping website.  One way that you can do this is through a Direct Domain Navigation marketing strategy.

What is Direct Domain Navigation?

Instead of performing a Google search, many people looking for a specific product simply type a generic word into the URL field of their browser.  For instance, if I was looking for mittens, I might type www.mittens.com into my browsers instead of doing an actual search for mittens.

How can you use Direct Domain Navigation to bring traffic to your dropshipping website?

By registering multiple generic domain names that all feed into your dropshipping website, you can capture traffic from Direct Domain Navigation.  The point is to bring traffic from multiple addresses into one website.

If I type www.mittens.com into my web browser, where will that take me?  Hopefully to your website.  Your main URL might actually be www.themittenshop.com, but because you’ve registered other similar addresses, you get traffic from Direct Domain Navigation.

Other reasons why registering multiple domain names is important:

• Though it’s preferable that your main URL be a .com address, you will want to register the .net, .ca, etc. addresses so your traffic won’t accidentally go to somebody else’s site.

• Registering common misspellings of your domain name can also prevent lost traffic.  Wal-Mart lost a huge amount of visitors until they registered www.walmart.com as well as www.wal-mart.com.

• Some major brand names also use the multiple-domain strategy to build websites for a specific promotional event.

What is the downside of Direct Domain Navigation?

Many of the most common generic domain names will already be owned by someone else.  However, with the advent of domain marketplaces, you can often purchase URLs from current owners for reasonable prices.

internet marketing, website design / help

One of the absolute most important aspects of website design and online business marketing is improving your SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.  The whole point of SEO is to get your dropshipping website listed at the top of the search engine response pages for keywords relevant to your business.  If you are operating a chocolate-dipped fruit store, you want your business to be the first one that shows up when I Google “chocolate fruit”, “chocolate-dipped fruit” and even more obscure keywords like “gourmet gifts” or “wedding shower treats”.  Efficient SEO will bring in a ton of business, often more than you could pay for through Pay-Per-Click advertising, banner ads, flyers, etc. – that’s why it’s so important.

I’ve talked a lot about basic SEO techniques in previous posts, but you should be aware that search engines are constantly tweaking their algorithms to make the search experience better for users.  This means that you need to stay up to date with what the search engines are looking for.

One aspect of SEO that has become increasingly important is video.

Posting how-to and instructional videos is a great way to improve your SEO and get your business noticed, particularly for new or smaller businesses that have a hard time competing in traditional SEO.

3 things to remember when adding video to your website and your marketing efforts:

1. Video files need to be properly titled with keywords so they’re searchable.

Search engines often can’t read anything other than text (for instance they can’t read your logo if it’s an image instead of text).  Titling your video and posting a short summary or description is helpful both to search engines and to people visiting your site.

2. Your video needs to be valuable.

Your video needs to provide valuable information, blow people’s minds, or at the very least make your visitors laugh their socks off.  If your video has no value, nobody will want to watch it, link to it, or recommend it to friends.  Informative is probably the easiest note to hit, so film a video on how to perform an amazing card trick, how create the perfect rosettes for a birthday cake, or a review on the latest ergonomic bicycle helmet.  Obviously the video should be related to your product line, so the aforementioned videos would be on websites selling magic tricks, cake decorating supplies, and cycling gear.

3. Promote your video and your website on other venues

Post your video on YouTube and other popular sites.  By including a link to your website, you can bring in traffic.

SEO, internet marketing, website design / help

Okay, last week I promised I was going to publish a technical, step-by-step instruction of how to add meta-tags to your website.  However, having spent the intervening time researching, I realize I’m not really qualified to do that, since web design is far from my forte.  As a compromise, I’ve compiled a list of links to other sites with much better descriptions of how to add meta-tags to your website than I could come up with:

http://www.philb.com/metatag.htm

http://www.submiturl.com/metatags.htm

http://ezinearticles.com/?id=1693891

If you’re finding meta-tags a little out of your reach, remember, they’re most important for landing pages like your home page.  If you can find or hire someone to add meta-tags to even a few of your most important pages, it will be beneficial to your website.

website design / help

What is a meta-tag?

Meta-tags are descriptions in your HTML code that communicate with search engines and are often visible to people who find your dropshipping website on a search engine response page (SERP).

When is your meta-tag used?

Search engines like Google and Yahoo often default to the meta description information, or use part of your meta-tag and part of the text they find on the page with relevant keywords when choosing information to display on the SERP.

If your meta-tag is used on a SERP, a human being will read that information when deciding whether to visit your dropshipping website or not.

Why are meta-tags important?

Creating a compelling meta description for each page of your website gives you the most control over what people read about your site in the SERPs.  (Remember to include the same keywords as your meta-tags in your actual web page content, because that makes it far more likely that search engines will display your tag.)  Also, meta-tags occasionally impact your SEO.

What should your meta-tag say?

Your meta-tag should accurately and attractively describe your web page, using relevant keywords (though not too many or you’ll be tagged for keyword-stuffing).  It can only be 63 characters long, including spaces, so you’ll probably have to stick to around 6-12 words.  Use keywords first, adding things like your company name at the end of the description.  Your meta-tag doesn’t have to be a perfectly grammatical full sentence as long as it is clear and comprehensible for a human reader.

Check back next week for a description of how to actually insert meta-tags into your website.

SEO, website design / help

If you don’t know what 100110101001111010 means and you don’t have a couple thousand dollars to hire a professional, using a template to design your website is probably your best option.  Templates are cheap and easy to use.  However, if not customized correctly, they can look unprofessional and unmemorable.  The following are tips on customizing your template to build the best possible website for your online business.

Choosing A Template:

1.Features

Choose the appropriate template to begin with: you don’t want to spend hours tweaking before you realize the one you’ve got won’t suit your needs.  Make a list of all the features your website needs to have (shopping cart, drop-down menus, search bar, etc.) and ensure that your prospective template has these capabilities.

2.Avoid Excess

You want your template to be as simple as possible, so avoid those loaded with features you’ll never use like flash animation.

3.See the potential

When searching for a template, you don’t need to find one that already looks exactly like you want it to – that’s the point of customizing.  Images, colors and fonts can all be altered.  The important thing is that your template comes with the right bones.

4.Look for CSS

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) based templates are usually easier to alter and customize.  With CSS, document presentation is separate from document content which allows you more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics.  In non-geek speak, this means you can alter aspects of your template without screwing the whole thing up.

Customizing Your Template:

The following are things you will need to alter on your template:

1.Logo

Your logo should be located at the top of your Homepage.  Your logo is your business name and/or symbol.  For instance, if you are operating a cosmetics website, your logo might be your business name “Beauty Star” with your symbol of a tube of lipstick on top of a star.

2.Photographs

Your homepage and all other pages need photographs.  On you product pages, these will be photographs of your products.  On other pages like your Contact Us Page and Homepage, they will probably be stock photographs.  It’s important that you purchase these photographs from a unique source.  DO NOT simply use the photographs already displayed on your template, because a dozen other people have already done that.  In the last month I’ve visited five or six websites carrying the same photograph of a blond college girl holding a stack of books.  I would never buy anything from those sites because I can tell they were thrown together in five minutes without attention to something as simple as the photograph on their Homepage.  The worst part is, the college girl doesn’t even have anything to do with their products – they’re selling things as diverse as pool inflatables and perfume.  For our hypothetical cosmetics website, we might purchase a stock photograph of a woman undergoing a relaxing spa treatment, or maybe use a large picture of one of the most popular cosmetics products.

3.Colors and Font

Just like you need to change the photographs on your template, you also need to alter the colors and fonts.  This accomplishes two purposes: it makes your website unique, and it allows you to optimize your site to best sell your products.  For my cosmetics site I might change the background to a relaxing green and make the font slightly more feminine.

4.Links

One of things you’ll choose on your template is how many webpages your site has (product pages, article pages, etc.) so you will have to alter the navigation links on your Homepage to reflect these pages.  (The navigation links are the buttons on your toolbar).  Keep in mind, you don’t have to organize your pages in the manner suggested by the template.  If you want the Contact Page to be first on your toolbar, then make it first.  If you want to add a blog link, go ahead.

5.Content

Never, never use any content that comes with the template.  Don’t even use the same wording for your copyright or contact info.  Make sure you custom write every section of your website, and ensure that you leave plenty of space for valuable content like educational articles and product reviews.

If you are really, really hopeless at web design and even customizing a template is beyond you, consider hiring a service to do the customizing for you.  It will probably cost you around $100, depending on the complexity of the job.

website design / help

Google is tweaking its search engine so “real time” results are more frequently included.  Real time results are heavily weighted toward fresh content.  This means that your ranking on the SERPs (Search Engine Response Pages) could be much more volatile – you could be number 1 one minute, and number 6 a few minutes later.  How can you boost your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by taking advantage of real time searching?

First: Fresh Content All The Time

Fresh content is important with all search engines, but particularly with Google who uses an algorithm called QDF (Query Deserves Freshness).  This means that freshness is an important factor in ranking.  The newer the content the better, and the more new content the better.  If you are not adding fresh content to your dropshipping website daily, you are probably not maximizing your SEO.  This content can be as simple as a Tip of the Day or a blog post.  Make sure your content contains plenty of relevant keywords, especially in the title.  Also, try to write about topics that are current, exciting, and interesting.  Keep abreast of news and developments relevant to your product/field of interest.  This will help your search engine ranking, please your customers, and encourage people to comment on your articles and pass them along to friends.

Second: Social Media Marketing

If you haven’t been promoting your online business on Twitter, Facebook, Ning, etc., now is the time to start.  Real time searching  rewards up-to-the-minute sources like Twitter.  Social Media platforms are also a great way to get your content passed along from person to person (viral marketing).  The more catchy, interesting, and useful your information is, the more likely people are to share it.  Of course your article will contain links to your website, so promotion of your article is promotion of your site.

Ultimately real time searching rewards your hard work today instead of favoring the online businesses who have been around the longest.  Thus, real time searching is a friend to fledgling online entrepeneurs.  It allows you to compete in SEO even though you’re just a newbie, as long as you’re willing to put the time in to create quality content and build a strong social media presence.

SEO, internet marketing, website design / help

You are probably familiar with the concept of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your website.  You might already be engaged in a number of activities to improve your search engine ranking including regularly adding fresh content, building inbound links, and submitting your website to search engines and directories.  But did you know that you can get the best results by focusing on web pages individually?  In a sense, each page of your site is like its own website.  This is particularly true of sites that cover a number of topics or themes.  Say you operated a notions website: you might have separate pages for knitting, embroidery, cross-stitch, rug-hooking, etc.  Each of these pages would be like its own website.  Each page would bring in its own visitors who searched for keywords like “embroidery thread” or “latch hooking”.

How can you take advantage of the unique nature of each of your web pages?

1. Submit individual web pages to directories and search engines.

You can’t submit your pages all at once or they’ll be tagged as spam, but you can certainly submit one web page URL per week to each of your targeted directories or search engines.  This is known as deep submission, and is extremely important because search engines generally do not look at every page of your site when ranking you – some don’t make it past the homepage.  Your homepage doesn’t cover all the relevant topics and keywords contained in your website, so you need to make sure your other pages are considered.  While it’s not necessary to submit pages that won’t help your ranking, you definitely want to submit all pages with valuable content and plenty of keywords.  This will help your SEO and will bring traffic to specific, targeted parts of your website.

2. Ensure that every page is an efficient landing zone.

If people are landing on, say, your blog or newsletter or Tip of the Day section, you want to make sure they still see the rest of your website.  Make it easy for them to navigate to the homepage and any product pages.  Have a search bar at the top of each page.  Ensure that contact information is visible at all times.  You can even have an option for them to sign up for your newsletter or email offers at the bottom of each page.

3. Write strong meta-tags for each page.

Meta-tags do not generally help your SEO, but they appeal to the human beings reading the SERPs (Search Engine Response Pages).  A good meta-tag accurately and concisely describes what each page has to offer the visitor.

4. Create new pages that you can individually optimize.

For instance, if you have a hiking gear website, consider making separate pages for local hiking in your area, hiking in exotic locales, and maybe a survival tips section.  This kind of diversification allows your website to appeal to a wider range of people: it casts a net to capture traffic you might never see otherwise.

internet marketing, website design / help

Your domain name is the address where people can find your online business website.  You can pick whatever domain name you wish (as long as it hasn’t already been taken by somebody else), but it’s not a decision you should make lightly.  Your domain name is one of your most powerful marketing tools.  It’s the first ambassador of your business, the first words that people associate with your company, so it needs to be strong and evocative.  It’s also the tool people use to find your website so it needs to be clear and easy to remember.

5 Tips For Choosing Your Domain Name:

1. Mimic the name of your online business as closely as possible.

If your business is called “Bamboo Heaven”, your domain name should probably be “www.bambooheaven.com”.  Make sure you always choose a .com address – this is the most common suffix, and the one that people will default to.  If you want to be really thorough you can purchase all the domain names for www.bambooheaven (.com, .ca, .net, etc,) and redirect so they all feed into your website.

2. Consider an adjective or noun for your address.

You may not be able to use your company’s name if that domain name is already taken or your company’s name would make for a long and confusing address (”Aunty Ida’s Notions ‘N Things”, for instance).  In this case, you might want to try a descriptor name like “www.sewing.com” or “www.embroidery.com”.  Most of these will probably already be taken, but you might get lucky.  The benefit of a name like this is how short, easy to spell, and evocative it is.  However, it doesn’t promote your online business‘ name.

3. Avoid domain names that are only acronyms.

They’re not descriptive, not memorable, and they have no keywords in them.  It’s probably better to have a somewhat long name “www.brandonmarshallconsulting.com” than the totally non-descript “www.bmc.com”.

4. Don’t use dashes or symbols in your domain name.

You may be tempted to do something like “www.brandon-marshallconsulting.com” simply because it’s available, but that will be hard for people to remember.  Also, if there’s already a domain name so similar to yours that you have to add dashes, consider how many of your would-be visitors are going to end up at that other site.  If your company name actually does have a dash or symbol in it, make sure you register both domain names, (”www.walmart.com” and “www.wal-mart.com”) to cover all your bases.

5. Do a test run.

Tell your friends and family your online business name and ask them to guess what they would expect your domain name to be.  Try giving someone your domain name over the phone and see how difficult it is for them to copy/spell.  If people are misspelling your domain name in one or two common ways, consider registering those names and feeding them into your site as well.

All these contingencies may seem unecessarily circumspect, but you can’t calculate how much business could be lost by a bad domain name.  Your domain name is a roadmap and a billboard all in one – so make sure you pick the best name possible.

internet marketing, website design / help

A properly designed website is like a Venus Flytrap: sleek, efficient, intoxicating (to its target audience at least), and able to snag its victim in the blink of an eye.  Website design is crucial because if your site doesn’t appeal to your visitor, they’re not going to stick around long enough to find the smokin’ deal you’re offering on organic diapers, or the oh-so-witty-and-informative article you posted on jumping stilts.  The following are some crucial website design tips that are unfortunately overlooked by many an amateur online entrepreneur:

photo credit: Sam Catchesides

Tip #1: Always format your website so it can be properly viewed on common browsers (Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, etc.).  There’s no way visitors are going to download a new browser just to view your dropshipping website.

Tip #2: Make sure your site can be viewed at any resolution: use stretch layouts that fit any screen resolution so all your visitors can see your website as it was meant to be seen.

Tip #3: Ensure that your website loads quickly: preferably five seconds or less.  Minimizing graphics, flash, and scripts, removing unwanted tags and unused scripts, and using SSI (Server Side Include) files wherever possible can help decrease load times.

Tip #4: Never put an “Under Construction” notice on any of your pages. You are going to be continually adding fresh content, products, links, etc. to your dropshipping website.  Posting “Under Construction” is like broadcasting that your site isn’t ready yet, and implies there is nothing of value to be found there currently.  Many sites remain “under construction” for months, years, or forever, so visitors are unlikely to check back in the future.  Finally, search engines like Yahoo will reject your site if any pages have “Under Construction” posted on them.

Tip #5: Choose a theme. Bold, bright, simple graphics are the most pleasing to the largest amount of people.  They’re impactive without being overwhelming and they’re not so taste-specific that they turn off half your visitors.  Choose a color and graphic theme, then use it on each of your webpages.  This will give your website continuity and reinforce the message of your color/graphic choices.  The colors and images on computer screens are large and brilliant: a little goes a long way.  One impressive image, a few tabs, and a couple paragraphs of text are usually sufficient for the homepage.  Subsequent pages need not be much more complex.  Clean, white space is actually a good thing.

Tip #6: Keep your text simple. Plainer fonts like Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri, and Verdana are easier to read and provide the simple, professional appearance you are trying to achieve.  Further, a visitor has to have a font loaded in their system in order to see it properly, so if you use something really obscure people may not even be able to view it.

Tip #7: Don’t assault visitors with background music. Like animation, background music makes your site load more slowly and is annoying and unnecessary to many (dare I say most) people.  I often surf the internet while talking on Skype through my headset: when I click on a site that blasts music into my earphones drowning out my call, I am less than happy, and navigate away from that site immediately.  It’s even more annoying when the audio is some kind of sales pitch.  Many of your visitors will find your site while at work, talking on the phone, surfing with their speakers turned up, etc., where unexpected sound will be very unwelcome.  For an example of what I’m talking about, eat seven Krispy Kremes and then in a fit of remorse look up the Flirty Girl Fitness website where you will be subjected to cheesy pink noise, an extended intro, and the atrocity listed below:

Tip #8: Never use a “navigate away” box for a last minute pitch. Pop up boxes of any kind are Satan’s leprechauns and should be outlawed.  A box that pops up when I try to navigate away from a website shouting “Are you sure you want to leave this site?  We have an amazing offer for you!” will never, ever prevent me moving on.  In fact, I can’t imagine anyone who would be swayed by that.  It’s just obnoxious, and sounds like a desperate huckster in a Moroccon bazaar.

photo credit: cattardbezzina

These are primarily aesthetic and function tips.  As I’ve stated in other blogs, the real efficacy of your dropshipping website lies in its VALUE to the customer.  What are they getting when they visit your site?  Great deals?  Hard to find products?  Tips and advice?  Educational materials?  A belly laugh?  Community?  You have to give something in order to get something (sales and/or traffic that will make ads and affiliate links profitable).  Know what you’re giving as well as what you’re selling.

dropshipping, online business, website design / help

There are many resources you can add to your dropshipping website to increase the value and interest of your site.  This is important to bring in traffic and build relationships with your customers.  I’ve mentioned blogs, articles, product reviews, Tips of the Day, etc., many times as possible content you can add.  Now I want to talk about forums.  Adding a forum to your website is a great way to build a community of return visitors.  If you are using social media marketing (see “Marketing Your Dropshipping / Wholesaling Website Using Social Media“), a forum is particularly appropriate.

photo credit: Lindspetrol

What is a forum?

A forum is a web page where visitors can interact with each other.  They can leave messages and comment on other people’s messages.

What are the benefits of a forum?

Beside the aforementioned traffic and sense of community, it helps imbue your dropshipping website with solidity and professionalism.  Further, a forum can be extremely educational.  You always want to provide valuable content on your website, and with a forum, other posters will help provide this content by answering each other’s questions (this also helps your SEO).  Also, a forum helps you keep in touch with your customer base.  If you see people talking about a particular product or service, you can be sure to get it on your site.  Thus you can stay on top of the trends by reading your own or other people’s forums.  Finally, a forum is a good place to put a little subtle advertising in the form of banner ads, links, etc. to bring in extra income.

photo credit: Felixe

How do you install a forum on your dropshipping website?

Many website hosting packages actually come with an option to add a forum to your site.  If yours doesn’t, you can get a script that will set up and run a forum, and install it on your web hosting server.  Some are free; the more complex ones cost money.  Installing it can be a little tricky, so unless you are quite computer savvy, you will probably have to pay somebody to do it.  The easiest thing is to use a host who provides it.

photo credit: Sham Hardy

What are the possible negatives of a forum?

Besides the potential difficulty of setting up your forum, it can be challenging to build interest.  When visitors check out a forum with few posts, they aren’t motivated to add anything themselves or visit again.  Try and get friends and family to post on your forum to get the ball rolling.  It’s important to have a lot of in-depth industry-related posts because that is also how most people find forums – by Googling a question and finding the answer on the forum.  Finally, managing a forum can be time-consuming.  You want to restrict the posts as little as possible because people are unlikely to return if their post gets bounced.  Unless you have a family or children-friendly website, you probably shouldn’t delete posts for a little profanity or inappropriateness – save your veto power for the really offensive stuff.  However, you’ll get a lot of spam posts that are thinly-veiled advertising from individuals and spam bots, and you’ll want to remove that junk.

dropshipping, internet marketing, website design / help