Copyright 2005 Peter Tarrida del Marmol
Many people will tell you that to get your web site noticed you
need to 'optimize' your site for the search engines. You are
then led up a path where you have to keep changing your web site
as the search engines change their ways of listing things. As
fast as you 'optimize' your site, Google and the others have
moved the goalposts, meaning you have to keep optimizing over
and over again.
Now consider some facts. Most people in the world are not users
of the Internet. Let's repeat that. The vast majority of people
who you want to reach don't use the Internet. It doesn't matter
how well you optimize your web site, they simply will never find
it.
Here's another fact. Some of the best Internet marketers make
most of their sales 'offline'. They sell their books, CD-ROMs
and so on at seminars, workshops and conferences. Indeed, for
many 'Internet marketers' these 'offline' sales represent the
bulk of their income.
So what do these facts tell us? They show us that 'offline'
promotion is more important than online promotion. You may be
able to optimize your web site to get high rankings in a search
engine. But that doesn't mean you'll reach the vast majority of
people who could buy your product or use your information.
This was confirmed recently by one study that showed most people
go to an Internet address (URL) after having read it in a
newspaper or magazine, been given it by a friend or colleague,
or having heard it being mentioned by someone speaking at a
meeting or on TV. In other words, it seems that significant
numbers of people who get to your web site will do so having
heard the URL somewhere outside the Internet.
You can get many people visiting your web site, even if you are
not ranked highly by the search engines. You can do this in two
main ways:
1. Write articles for use in regular publications - newspapers,
magazines and so on. Always include your URL in the article and
you'll get millions of people to notice your web site address.
2. Speak at every opportunity. Make presentations to business
clubs, chambers of commerce, local societies - you name it, you
should speak at it. Every time you speak, announce or your web
site address.
Although these are the two principal ways of gaining offline
publicity for your web site, don't neglect your business
stationery, posters, car stickers and so on. The more your web
site address is visible outside the web, the more visitors you
will get regardless of how kind the search engines are to you.
About the author:
Peter Tarrida del Mármol is a spanish online and offline
marketer. To read more articles go to:
http://www.auctionearnings.com
