During the early days of business on the Internet, visitors would arrive on your home page 99 times out of 100. Today, most of your visitors skip your front door completely and go directly to the content that they’re looking for, usually through a search engine or an in-bound link. When they arrive there, do they still have everything they need to take the action you want them to take? They should be able to do anything that they can do on your home page and navigate to any other page in your web site from every single page in your web site. If not, you’ll lose a lot of potential business.

Google recently updated their toolbar PR, and as usual, web site owners everywhere are making a wide range of speculations as to what it means. So what does the latest PR update indicate and what does it mean to your search engine optimization campaign?

Not much really.

Google has been trying for some time now to actively combat the practice of web site owners buying and selling text links, both through their algorithm, and manually, with little success. Their latest PR update was a result of attempting to achieve that goal by devaluing what they deemed to be paid links, as well as irrelevant links (links from web sites unrelated to the target web site).

So what was the end result? Many suffered varying degrees of toolbar PR decrease, however their ranking and traffic remained the about same, so other than a slightly bruised ego, most web site owners were not affected. On the other hand, this is definitely a sign of things to come. Google is serious about cleaning up the spam in their results and they have the resources and brains to do it, and if the updates over the last few years tell us anything, it’s that they don’t mind hurting a few hundred thousand small businesses to do it. After all, if you lose all of your traffic overnight, the only way to regain even a portion of it is to begin a PPC campaign, which benefits them.

You may be asking yourself “How do I avoid all of this?” The short answer is you can’t, at least not with absolute certainty. You can however, minimize your risk by not relying on any one source of traffic. Utilize a search engine optimization campaign along with an online advertising campaign and traditional media, such as print advertising or direct mail. In regards to your SEO, keep it relevant. Don’t be afraid to buy or trade links, but be sure that they are relevant to your web site. Also, don’t try to trick the search engines with black hat techniques. Most no longer work, and when you get caught, your web site will get banned.

If you already own a domain name, you probably know how difficult it can be to find just the right one. Between the millions of businesses online and the domain speculators who purchase thousands of domains with the intent of reselling them at a profit, it can be almost impossible.

If you’re already in business, you’re going to have to acquire a domain name that is the best fit for your company name. This will require either searching for the closest possible match, or buying a domain from whoever has the one you’re looking for. On the other hand, if you are just getting ready to start your company, you have an advantage because you can find an easy-to-remember and catchy domain name and then base your company name on that. It may seem backwards to choose your domain name before naming your company, but it can really make a tremendous difference in the effectiveness of your marketing.

When your domain name is different than your company name, your marketing investment will have less impact because you have to remind your prospects that the domain and your company are one in the same. As Seth Godin mentioned, “The internet has taught people what to do when they see a domain. It’s not just an address, it’s the first bit of marketing.” For example, when a visitor arrives at www.datementor.com, they are going to know exactly what the site is for. Had Brad used www.bradfinsilver.com instead, chances are that many of the visitors would leave before putting in the effort to figure it out.

Obviously, you’ll want to choose a .com domain rather than a .net domain, and you should avoid the other extensions, such as .biz, .info, or .us like the plague. Also, be sure to register it for at least five years. This ensures that you don’t forget to renew it, plus, it can help improve your search engine ranking to a small degree.

The internet has given businesses of all sizes a tremendous amount of leverage in terms of efficiency, productivity and exposure, but the fundamentals of business still and always will apply.

Despite the stories you may have heard from some of the latest internet marketing gurus, you simply can’t invest a few hundred dollars to start an affiliate marketing or drop shipping program, and then sit on the beach while your web site rakes in the cash for you. Business on the internet is like any other business. There is no easy way to get rich overnight because a successful business is built by providing value to people.

The internet can be a powerful tool for any business as long as you have realistic expectations about what it can do for you. For example, we recently received a phone call from an individual wanting us to market an affiliate program for them, with the expectation of generating $6,000 dollars per month right away. Had this individual put together a business plan, like any potential entrepreneur should do, he would have realized that $6,000 in monthly revenue from an affiliate program paying three percent would require a sales volume of $200,000 per month! Oh, and he wanted to do this for an investment of $1,500. There is simply no industry where a $1,500 investment will produce a return of $2.4 million – especially in a start-up company.

In order to successfully market your company, you need to understand that your success will be based on steady, cumulative efforts over time.

It amazes me how much money some companies will spend on marketing, and then design their web site with no contact information what so ever. Their misguided thinking assumes that they will save money by not having to talk to all those “pesky customers.” They honestly believe they will then simply dig around online until they find the answers they’re looking for. In reality, these visitors will be frustrated and leave your web site to spend their hard-earned dollars with one of your competitors.

If you want to start increasing your web site’s conversions dramatically, make your contact information prominent and include it on every page.

There once was a time that simply adding relevant content to your web site would ensure high-ranking for applicable keyword phrases. The battle cry for SEO specialists and internet marketing gurus everywhere became “Content is king!” As more and more people rushed to add relevant content to their web sites to earn that coveted search engine traffic, content began to hold less importance in the algorithms that search engines use to rank a web page. Today, on-site content is just a factor, one that in and of itself carries little weight. But when taken into account with a host of other factors, such as the age of the domain and the number and relevance of inbound links, content is an important factor.

Unfortunately, like anything else, more than a few people have attempted to use this to promote their own web sites without actually doing any real work. Every single day, we find articles written by our staff posted on spam blogs by ill-informed SEO specialists who are attempting to promote their own pharmacy or gambling related web sites. They apparently have the idea that by simply copying content from our web site and other web sites, that they will earn tons of traffic overnight and their pockets will be stuffed with cash. In reality, it doesn’t work that way. The search engines are smarter than that.

Fresh, relevant content is a valuable asset because it encourages your visitors to stay longer and come back more frequently, and often, even link to your web site. It also encourages the search engines to rank your web site higher for relevant terms. The key here is fresh, relevant content. Simply copying someone else’s content is not going to help you improve your ranking, nor is adding large amounts of irrelevant content. Your focus should be on producing quality content on a regular basis, and over time your web site will begin to reap the rewards of your hard work.

Flash intros were all the rage during the dot com bubble of the 1990s, but most web site designers with any sense have long since abandoned them because of the multiple problems they caused. For example, most SEO savvy designers today know that search engines can not access the content in a flash file so a website with a flash intro will appear to be nothing more than a blank page. Another problem is that research (according to a MarketingSherpa survey) has shown that over 80% of visitors hate flash intros — note the abnormally strong emotion! Remember, your visitors came to your web site for a reason, and I would bet any amount of money that it wasn’t so that they could have your commercial forced on them.

Any internet marketing company or your own in-house marketing team can run a web analytics program to determine the number of visitors that quickly hit the back button when faced with your intro. When you take that number along with your conversion rate and profit margin, you can figure out how much revenue it’s costing you each month. Is it a number you’re comfortable throwing away?

On the surface, the PPC (or Pay-Per-Click) advertising model seems to be perfect. You get to show your ad to a targeted audience an unlimited number of times, and you’re only charged when someone takes action by clicking on your ad to visit your web site. You can even start with a budget as low as fifty dollars. Once you dig a bit deeper into the real-world mechanics of a PPC campaign, you quickly realize just how ineffective it can be.

Many people don’t even pay attention to the sponsored (PPC) ads, whether they are displayed on the search results or on the millions of MFA web sites because they know that they paid to be there. Another thing to consider is that your competitors are usually more than happy to click away on your ads, whittling your budget away. This practice is known as click fraud, and according to industry estimates, ranges between 12-20%.

A more effective approach is to combine an organic SEO campaign with an online advertising campaign (utilizing video advertising). This lets you reach your prospects on the web sites that they know and trust, such as forums, blogs or portals that they frequent, as well as through the major search engines. When you tie this to an effective offline advertising campaign, you can quickly become a dominate force in your industry.

Does your marketing strategy consist of a little newspaper advertising here, some direct mail there and maybe email marketing from time to time? If so, it’s pretty similar to that of many other small businesses. That’s not a good thing because it’s inconsistent and your marketing channels are not working together.

Marketing is a collective activity in that when multiple channels are used together, the results are almost always far greater than the sum of the channels. Direct mail, radio and television can support internet marketing to bring you results that you could never achieve with the same budget used in any one of those mediums. This is because after the creative aspect of any marketing campaign, the effectiveness is due largely to repetition and consistency. When your prospect is on their way to work and they hear your ad, they may be only slightly convinced that your product or service is right for them. When they arrive at work they’ll probably do a little more research online, and if they come across your marketing message again, they will likely become a little more convinced. Later that night when they’re watching an episode of The Big Idea on their local cable channel and they see your television ad, chances are high that they’ll be very convinced that your product or service is the right choice for their needs. Now this doesn’t mean that the will buy from you just yet, but you will be standing on significantly higher ground than your competitors at this point.

To develop a marketing campaign where all of the channels work together you’ll need to determine what your desired outcome is to be. If you’re trying to educate your prospects about a complex product or service, all of your marketing channels should be used either to drive them to your web site where they can access the applicable information or to encourage them to schedule a meeting with one of your representatives. If your goal is to push sales in a particular retail location, all of your marketing channels should be focused on driving them directly to that location. In a nutshell, choose one goal and utilize all of the marketing channels available to you to foster achieving that goal.

You web site is more than a simple online brochure, in fact; it’s much more than a comprehensive presentation or even an online store. When used properly, your web site is a powerful tool to collect data from your prospects so that you can reach them through a variety of marketing channels from now until eternity, or at least for as long as they continue to allow you to.

There are probably an infinite number of ways to legitimately collect information from your prospects. You are only limited by your own imagination. Each industry will be a little different, but if you spend a little time thinking about what your prospects really want, you can figure out a way to give it to them in exchange for some basic information.

You?ll need at the very least, a contact form on your web site that collects as much pertinent information as possible. Remember, the more you know about your prospects, the better your chances of converting them into clients. Most business owners are worried about scaring prospects away by making certain fields on their contact forms mandatory. This simply won’t happen. While you will usually get fewer inquiries when certain fields are mandatory, the inquiries you do get will be of a much higher quality, so rather than spending a lot of time trying to convert prospects who aren’t serious about what you have to offer, you can focus your energies on the ones that are.

You can take this concept a step further by providing incentives such as offering free resources on your web site, like case studies, white papers, ebooks, any form of data or even web-based tools that would be of use to your visitors, which should be located in a section of your web site that requires registration to access.

While you’re at it, you should take the information you collect and put it into a contact management program such as ACT or Goldmine so that you can use it as effectively as possible. This way you can schedule calls, meetings and emails with your prospects as well as view a complete history of all of your past interactions with them.