Time is normally limited and with the Internet being a fast moving environment requiring fresh content daily, weekly and monthly, you will hardly have the time to create web copy at leisure time. This is perhaps the most important reason for hiring a web content writing company where numerous writers will slave away at professional copy as fast as they can. If however, you decide to do it yourself you will benefit from the web content writing tips below.

Internet and the offline environment differs vastly

Normally when you write a features article, a short story, essay, report or book you will have enough space and time to start with a comprehensive introduction leading gradually to the climax before coming to a conclusion. It is not the case with the Internet. People read Internet pages in another way and will simply not have the time to scan through an exceptionally long introduction. Just as time is not on your side when it comes to web content writing, so the reader doesn’t have time. You will write copy with that in mind. Also keep in mind that the copy for a blog differs from that of the actual information pages that you will create for your website. That copy in return will differ from the articles you will write as part of internet marketing. The copy for the newsletter will once again be unique and will have another structure. Our focus here will be on populating your website with content.

Web content writing for populating the website

When writing articles for the website you will have more freedom of expression and can use paragraphs rather than bullets and short sentences. The reason is that once a person decides to read an article, they are willing to spend time on the activity. When a person visits a website to find information about a product or service however, they will scan the page and not read it. In this case the content should be formatted for scanning and not reading.

Create a structure for scanning

Web content writing should thus be done in a hierarchical manner throughout the website. You need to give the readers clues as to the importance of wording through headings, contrasts, placement of information and colours. This is where superior graphic design will also be a benefit. Use style sheets in navigation to help the user.

Font sizes and colour combinations

Apart from the way you will go about to write the content you will also have to pay close attention to presentation. Use narrower columns rather than wide columns to organize information. Use an easy to read font type such as Arial or Verdana that will display well on all computers.

Web content writing for internet marketing purposes – the actual copy

The page content must be visible within the first paragraph. Many readers will only read the first paragraph to decide whether they want to move on or will want to read the rest of the page. Most important keywords and information should already be in the upper part of the page. You will have long paragraphs at first – not a problem you will summarize each paragraph in a single sentence which will form the beginning of the paragraph.

Headings and bullets for scanning

Have you ever noticed how many people never buy the newspaper and only read the news headlines when they pass the newspaper advert boards? The reason is simply because the majority of persons feel that they can get the information they need from the headlines. Keep that in mind when you populate the pages of your website. Create information packed headlines for the various paragraphs. This will help the reader to get the information wanted without actually having to read through the content. Create bulleted lists to organize benefits.

Armed with the above information on how to do web content writing for internet marketing purposes you are now ready to practice a few times before applying the knowledge to your own website.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

Bounce rate is a metric to indicate how many visits to your website were only to one page before the user exited. It is not to say that if a user only visits one page and then leaves that there is something wrong with the website. The user could have found the information looking for or may have followed a link from a site to another. Affiliate marketing sites will not so much look at the bounce rate if the user came in via a search term, but rather where the user went from the page. If the user clicked on the link leading to the landing site it will indicate success.

Another instance where the bounce rate will not matter that much is the first page of a blog. The user may have read all the posts on the main page and then leave – not an indication of poor website performance, but rather that the user has found the content useful, provided the time spent on the first page was enough to read through the various posts. In this instance you will look at the time spent to measure website performance as part of internet marketing rather than the actual bounce rate.

How to measure the bounce rate as an indication of website performance related to internet marketing

The bounce rate is obtained by looking at the number of visits to the page. The formula for the bounce rate will be number of one page visits divided by the number of persons entering the website through the specific page. Google Analytics is an excellent tool to use if you want to identify the bounce rate. Many of the website analytics and statistics tools normally found at the website control panel also provide the information without having to do complex formulas to get to the answer.

Why is the bounce rate so important for measuring website performance as part of internet marketing?

Often when clients approach an internet marketing company because their site is not performing as desired, the internet marketing company will first use an analytics tool to discover flaws in the site and thus identify areas that can cause poor website performance. The bounce rate is one of those metrics used simply because it is such a good indicator of what is transpiring on the website. High bounce rates universally give an indication of poor website performance except for the cases already discussed. If someone lands on a page and then leaves without visiting another page or taking an action it indicates that the person did not find what they were looking for or it was their perception.

When is the bounce rate high and thus an indication of poor website performance?

Above 90% normally indicates that there must be some kind of technical difficulty while a bounce rate above 70% can indicate a problem with keywords or content and information structure including navigation. The range between 30-60% is rather difficult as it can indicate a bit of a problem, but not enough to give a clear indication of what the problem area may be. In this respect you may want to also check where the visits originated from and analyse whether the links to your site were not relevant. Below 30% means your website performance is excellent and you are at least getting part of the internet marketing spending back. Keep going on this track!

Internet marketing companies will also look in-depth at the website performance to see whether there is a problem with content, specific types of traffic or technical problems which may cause high bounce rates at specific pages.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

The first step should be the setting up of a performance measuring system. The measurement of performance will also depend upon whether it s a conversion or traffic driven website.

Conversion sites – role of keyword measurement for pay per click online marketing

If you have an e-commerce site you will want more sales conversions, no matter how many pages viewed unlike the advertising site where many page views will be important or the deep message site where the time spent will be important. Here you will look at the cost per acquisition of a keyword. You will want the conversion measured and can use the tools available from Google or Yahoo for the purpose. As an alternative set up your own conversion measurement system by getting the JavaScript from the search engine and placing the code with your account number into the HTML of the thank you or ordered made page at the bottom just before the body close tag area.

Traffic driven website – keyword performance in pay per click online marketing
If the website makes its money from advertisement selling then the goal is to find a measurement tool for that and identify means for improving the overall traffic driven to the website through pay per click online marketing. With this method volume of traffic will be important. A tool to measure it will be the Google Analytics which can help to measure how long a user has spent on the website and specific pages, what the bounce level is and how many pages a user has visited before leaving the website.

If you have a website that has an in-depth message you will be more concerned about the time spent at the site. In this instance you will want keywords that ensure longer time spent at the site to ensure that the users actually read through the whole message.

If you have selected a low cost keyword which doesn’t generate enough page views per visit then the keyword is not performing as desired. In this instance it may be better to get a more expensive keyword that will lead to more page views. You will want as many page views from each visitor as possible.

Fine tuning keywords for optimal performance for the pay per click online marketing

Alter the keyword performance by making changes to the search boundaries such as the bidding price, negatives, landing page target, and the ad to match the keyword etc. You can have the bid lowered to improve performance of take steps to remove non-relevant keyword clicks to ensure that the keywords will be highly relevant. You can even scrap the ad and write a new one that will ensure more relevant hits and not simply click thru actions that will not give the desired results. Make sure the landing page will be highly relevant to the keyword used in the pay per click online marketing.

Taking the poor performing keywords out of the picture

If the keyword is performing terrible then it will be time to take it out of the picture. Check what is the most important to you – traffic or conversion and create a balance. If the keyword brings in loads of traffic, but not that many conversions you can still keep it, but if it brings in loads of traffic and no conversions or not generating the desired results eliminate it from your pay per click online marketing altogether.

Pay per click online marketing takes time and often loads of skill. If you don’t have time or knowledge to get the best results make use of an SEO internet marketing company to help get the best return on investment.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

Creating website structure as part of the internet marketing plan

It is all too easy to get off track especially if there will be many pages in the website. Create a structure diagram of the website first. It should look like an upside down tree, much the same as used in genealogy. The first entry will be the home page known as the index. From the index you will have numerous child pages on the second level. These pages will include the:

• About us page where you tell the client about your company
• Contact us page where all the contact details will be
• Location can be included in the contact us page or can be used as a standalone page
• Services & products pages which you can directly name such as baths, spas etc.
• Sitemap which is necessary for the search engines
• Articles which will be used for content pages on an ongoing basis
• Terms and conditions page
• Privacy statement
• Online shopping and ordering page

The above are just examples of second level pages. If you for instance, have a website about horses, you will have second level pages such as horses for sale, advertising, horse products, horse stables, horse riding, and more. Think descriptive as this will help the user to navigate through the site and will also help to improve the search engine placement for particular keywords. As a general note you will not have that many second level pages as each of the second level or child pages will branch out to numerous pages that fit under the specific category.

If you for instance, have an estate agency website you will have main categories such as Residential, Farm Land, and Commercial as part of the internet marketing plan website structure phase. Underneath each you will have rentals and sales in specific areas. You can add more pages under each of the second level pages which will then be the grandchildren or third level pages. Now count the pages. Although it may all of the sudden seem a lot of pages, some will fall away, but with many pages in your website you will have more pages that can be optimized for the search engines.

Internet marketing plan – keyword selection

Create titles for each of the pages that you have added to the tree. Now use the Insights search facility at Google or a tool such as Word Tracker to locate keywords which are relevant to each title and are in demand. The secret here is to find keywords for which there are gaps not yet filled by other websites. Also make a separate list of high in demand keywords already addressed by other websites, and of course also average keywords, and a few low ranking keywords.

If you have a website about free services and have a page title such as Fax to Mail you may find that many websites already use the keyword and as such you will find it difficult to rank tops without a bit of hard work. You will optimize the Fax to Mail page for the keyword phrase “ free fax to mail”, but will then also write a few articles about fax to mail. Each of the article pages will get a separate title such as:

Free Electronic Fax
Online Faxing Service
Free Email Fax

Optimize each of the article pages for one keyword phrase.

Internet marketing plan – Adding content on a regular basis

Once all the content pages have been written and uploaded you will need to add more pages every month for each of the main categories and subcategories. Each page should be optimized for one title and keyword phrase. Add the content pages to the articles page and make sure the content pages are also reflected in the sitemap as well as being linked from the articles page. Use these pages to link to other pages on your website and to link to the contact page and landing pages where the person can purchase products or services.

The above may become rather time consuming, but if time is a problem and you are concerned about your writing skills, get in the help of Internet marketing plan specialists and writers to create ongoing content and linking so that you can focus on your core business.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

Spam messages

Any SEO or internet marketing company that sends spam messages to email addresses should immediately be taken off your list of potential service providers. Internet marketing companies should make use of ethical means to market their products and services. If they send emails to you with messages such as “ We have visited your website and have noticed that it doesn’t rank well with the search engines. We have the solution..” they will most probably also use spam to promote your website.

The ranking of the internet marketing companies

If an SEO company claims that it can further a website’s ranking then surely their site’s ranking should also be good. If they only have a ranking of one, two or three how on earth will they be able to push your website’s ranking up? In short a company must practice what it preaches. Go onto Google and type “google pagerank” in the search box. You will find various sites where the pagerank of a site can be obtained in seconds. Use one of the sites to view the SEO company’s ranking. If they rank four and higher then you can trust their word. If not, get another company to do the job.

How did you find the SEO company?

If you could not locate the SEO company on keywords such as article marketing, internet marketing, web marketing, website marketing, online marketing, web promotion etc. on the first page of Google search results, chances are that the company will not be able to push your site high up on the search results for keywords relevant to your site and audience. It is thus essential that the company shows that it can do proper internet promotion and search engine placement for itself as well.

Range of services offered

Internet marketing companies only offering article writing or search engine submission services should be thrown out of the equation immediately. Online marketing is a whole mixture of activities such as link building, website design, search engine optimization, article writing, blog promotion, pay per click advertising, email newsletters, viral marketing and more. The SEO company should offer three or more of the above services to help you get the most from online advertising spending.

Ask questions

When an SEO company contact you regarding online marketing you have the right to ask questions such as:

• Can you list a few client sites with high rankings?
• Do you have examples of sites promoted and how the traffic has been increased to the sites?
• Do you offer a report back system such as web statistics which can be used to track the marketing success?

Look out for indications of misconduct, unethical behaviour, and scams such as:

• Selling of keywords
• Ranking on irrelevant keywords
• Search engine results which are in effect paid for keywords
• Spam mail
• Internet marketing companies that don’t have their own websites
• Creation of doorway sites which will lead to your site.

Be realistic in your expectations

It is possible to get overnight success with internet marketing, but will the success last or will your website be blacklisted? Stay away from any marketing technique that promises overnight success as black hat marketing techniques will be employed to accomplish this. It will not be long before the search engines pick up on the tricks and you will see your site end up in the sandbox on page four of five for a long time.

In summary

Only make use of internet marketing companies that follow sound online promotion strategies, have their own websites and a track record of successes.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

"Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today."

"Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today."

The reasons for using autoresponders in Internet marketing are as follows:

• The client receives immediate feedback after having completed an information or quote request. As such he feels important and knows that his query is being handled.
• If somebody requested help and a consultant came back to that person, an autoresponder can be forwarded to get feedback on the consultant’s service. In this way the client realizes that you see him or her as important. You can also use the information to extend or improve services.
• The client never has to wait for a reply.

Apart from the above  reasons you will find that autoresponders in Internet Marketing can also be used to build contact or lead lists.

"Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today."

• No sitemap present.
• No home option.
• Lack of consistency.
• Too small font size used.
• Over-indulgence in Flash.
• Having graphics with no descriptions.
• Including too many adverts which clutter the page.
• Having a web design that forces horizontal scrolling.

Just a few pointers, if it hurts, then think about all the revenue and traffic lost because of poor web design. Spend Internet marketing money on the web design first and then on the rest.

"Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today."

• Professional image – if your page sucks get a new one immediately. Sites don’t want to link to a fly by night type of website. Spend a bit of time on creating a professional image and webmasters will contact you for link exchanges while others will simply link to your pages.
• Relationship building – doesn’t stick well with the guy that hates competition, but come to think of it – if you have links from competitors and return the favour, both parties benefit. Comment on their site and blog. Ask advice and share some. Networking isn’t limited to the workplace.
• Directory listings – oh boy it sounds like work – and it is, but worth the incoming links.

Take the above three steps and see your website link popularity improve.

"Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today."