Just to remind you that last time we addressed the first of the three areas for attention below, this is the last part of the second section (which we broke up into 3 areas) – increasing your web reach.
1. Having a great website which coverts visitors to customers – (we’ll keep you informed of the website development of this customer as the development evolves)
2. Increasing your web reach – ensuring you are represented in the right places on the web
2.1. Research
2.2. Planning
2.3. The Work – With Examples
3. Engaging more digital marketing methods
Making Contact
You should have a list of websites that you like and would like to have listings on – whether these are links to your website, mentions of your brand or anything else…
Obviously every website is different so for this exercise we will run through 2 completely different resources:
1. Simple submission
2. Build a relationship
1. Simple Submission
These are for when you find either a local or industry specific listing – normally a directory. For this we will continue with the Dinosaur website that we mentioned in the last post.
During our research we came across quite a few toy specific websites from our competitors and keyword searches on Google. One of these was Toy Shop UK – http://www.toyshopuk.co.uk/ which has a Domain Authority of 53 and I think we can all agree is relevant to a website that sells dinosaur toys.
This is what we call a simple submission. If you visit this page you will see that there is a nice bright red button at the top right side of the page: Add Your Shop Here For Free
When we clicked on this we were taken to a page that told us how we can get a free listing. We had 2 options on this page Medium and Enhanced listings. Both are free so we obviously opted for the Enhanced listing. However it did take more time to create this listing so depending on the time you have allocated each month will depend on which option you would opt for.
The next stage was to simply visit the next page and fill in our company details. While filling in these details it is important not top copy any content from your own website (except for the obvious URL, Company name, address etc.). Make the company description as interesting as possible and give people reasons why they should visit your website. By doing this you will have more of a chance of getting the listings as well as a better chance of getting referring traffic from the website.
Time Taken
You should already have a list of these from the research list you have created so this will be a task that you should be able to perform quite quickly. To allow you to plan efficiently run through 5 websites and see how long it takes to request a link – then you can use this information for future planing.
2. Build a relationship
These are websites that you believe that you can not only get a listing from but you can build up a partnership/relationship with the owner over time. So don’t go in guns blazing and expect quick results.
One of the listings we came across for this was a toy magazine company with online presence: http://www.toynews-online.biz. Here we had a few options on how to build a relationship so we left the idea open and sent a nice introductory text explaining our company and asking how we could build a relationship.
Here it is worth mentioned that we didn’t send an email “Wow your website is amazing, we think your visitors would benefit from a link to our website” or anything as generic as that. Instead we sent a polite email letting them know what we can offer them and asking if they would have any use for what we offer.
This was then followed by approx. 15 emails to and fro and an in depth interview about our company. The result is a feature piece on our company and website. We have also established a good relationship with one of the editors and will probably work together in the future.
Time Taken
This is a task that will take a quite a lot of time – if it doesn’t then you are probably doing it wrong. However this is something that can be done as part of your daily routine up to a point. Then depending on how much content you want to provide depends on how much time you set aside.
If you want we can work with you on a plan and help you engage with other website owners to improve your website reach. If this is something that you are interested in please contact us: Jan Klin – jan@janklin.com 01928 788 100
What’s next
Part 3. Re-Positioning Your Web Business For Success: Engaging more digital marketing methods – social media, blogging, pay per click, content distribution and others.
