Decent Marketing: Experiential Marketing::
Blog Business World - Marketing, Public Relations, Search Engine Optimization. Dingos something about Whole Foods that borrows a page from the Starbucks handbook
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When it comes to having a lot of options for coffee you cant really beat Starbucks. It seems that theres virtually a store on every corner. Bad planning or an intentional marketing ploy? Its been statistically proven that the more Starbucks stores there are in a - mile radius the better each individual store will do. So what does this mean for your Internet marketing campaign? It means that the more stores you own, the better your main store will do.
Heres a real-time illustration: if you have a main website and five incoming links, youll get traffic to the main site from five places. Now this doesnt mean you need five additional sites along with your main one, these five incoming links are from other websites that often wont belong to you. Now if were talking numbers let me say this: five is paltry compared to where you need to be. When we work with clients we like to double, triple, or quadruple their incoming links. What does this mean to sales? Well, lets go back to our Starbucks example. Lets say youre scouring the Net for a perfect cup of Joe. When someone Googles perfect cup of Joe the mentions of your site come up in excess of 5,000 times. Your competitors come in somewhere at 1,000 or less. So it stands to reason that someone searching on this topic will go to your site before they hit your competitor, right?
Ok, so now that we have the incoming links thing down, how in the world do you go about getting all of these links? Well, sometimes the build is slow but thats ok. What were looking for are high-quality, high-traffic incoming links to your site. Lets break this down even further.
Going after incoming links can happen a variety of ways. Not the least of which is a link you get from a site after your book is reviewed. Thats probably the most basic link you can get. Ideally you want links from sites that can drive readers (buyers) to your book. Links from other author sites might be a nice way to network but they dont often leverage anything in the way of ranking or sales potential.
Why? Well, readers shopping for similar titles often wont migrate from one author site to another via a link, theyll generally head over to Amazon and find a list of similar titles or the category: Readers who bought this also enjoyed this title. Which then refers you onto a list of their best-selling books in the same genre. Second, unless youre getting a link from a celebrity author site, youll probably find that most author sites dont have great ranking. Google looks at the ranking of the site thats linked to you to determine how valuable this link is and in turn, how much it will matter to your overall site ranking.
The ideal incoming link is from a niche site, meaning that if youre pushing a WWII novel or a book on dieting, the link is coming from an authority site, i.e. a site that specializes in that topic.
The next option for getting more real estate is to start your own social networking page. There are a variety of sites that can benefit you including: Linkedin, MySpace, Squidoo, and my personal favorite: Facebook. These sites can all offer you a way to connect not just with other people in these social networking circles but also gain a valuable incoming link to your site.
Article syndication is another fantastic way to get more links. Most of us know and understand the article syndication process. You write an article of 500-2,000 words and send it (called syndicating) to sites like: EzineArticles, ArticleCity and many others. Remember to include your byline in the article with a link back to your site.
Commenting on blog postings is another way to drive links back to your site. Head on over to Technorati and dig up at least twenty of the top blogs in your market. Then get in the habit of commenting on the various posts with a link back to your site. The more you comment, the more links youll get. The secondary benefit to this is virtual networking: getting to know bloggers in your market is never a bad thing.
Gaining valuable real estate and building your stores isnt as difficult as you might think. It takes time, persistence, and some keen research skills to find the appropriate sites. In the end, the benefits far outweigh the amount of work youll do. Gaining exposure online will increase traffic, build platform, enhance exposure and grow your bottom line. So take a lesson from Starbucks and start building a store on every corner. Youll be glad you did.
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What Starbucks Taught Me About Search Engine Marketing