Issue 13, May 11, 1996

This article contains older information. Go here for newer information on linking strategies.

In this issue:

• The Link Site Marketing Strategy
• Gleanings from Spring Internet World 96 in San Jose
• Web Tales - Part IV: The Medium Delivers the Message
• E-Mail to the Editor

The Link Site Marketing Strategy

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

Times they are a-changing. Once upon a time, say 6 or 8 months ago, you could put up a Web site, advertise it on the major Web search engines, and expect some significant traffic. Since then the Internet has grown exponentially. You'd think more people would find you. Sometimes, however, it's fewer. Your Web site is lost in cyberspace.

With 16 million Web pages or so indexed by AltaVista, how can you get proper attention? Three things not to do:

• Give up
• Stop listing your site on Web search engines
• Wait passively for someone to come

The linking strategy has two phases:

Phase 1

Make sure you ask for links to every page in your field or industry that will link to you. You can find many of these sites on listed on my "Promoting your Web Site" page (http://www.wilsonweb.com/webmarket/promote.htm). But what if the link page(s) in your field want to charge for a link? Move to phase 2.

Phase 2

Establish your own link page for your field or industry, and make it the most complete. You'll have to work at this, but with time and persistence you can make your link page the place to come to find links to, say, the Indonesian crafts market. You'll provide a service to your competitors, of course. But if you are the host, guess whose banner ad is at the top of the page? With the glut of Web sites out there we have to help one another this way, or we'll be lost in cyberspace ourselves!

A variation on this is to host the Web page linking all the businesses in your geographic community, and then try to get Yahoo to carry it in their regional section. This is a particularly good strategy if yours is a local business. Local ISPs are likely to accept only their own customers' links. Chambers of commerce may only accept members. Let yours be the "free" source for links. And with the traffic you'll attract attention to your banner ad.

I have used this strategy since September 1995 with the "Small Business Web Marketing Info Center" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/webmarket/). While I don't normally recommend links from your Web site to other "cool spots on the Web" (why send people out the door?), this is the exception. On a strategic link page you are generating traffic you would not otherwise get. I find that perhaps 10% of the people who visit my link page come to the section of my Web site where I am selling Web page design, on-line stores, and consulting. This week approximately 667 people entered the "front door" of "Web Marketing Info Center".

The advantage of this strategy is that you can aggressively promote your "service" link site, and it doesn't look like you are just doing self-promotion. More places will link to your link site than to your core business front door.

Since we began this site it has received a modest amount of press coverage, both on- and off-line. In October, Your Company magazine "discovered" this site, bringing a flood of traffic. It has also been positively noticed by Web Review, Who's Marketing On-Line, an unsolicited spammer, Home Office Computing, and many others. Your strategic link site will probably be listed in an article on the Internet in your industry's trade publications (if you send them a news release), bringing many visitors.

Is this a legitimate service in the crowded information marketplace? By all means! Will it help your business? Yes, if you will work very diligently

1. to make it the best and most complete, and
2. to market it day in and day out using every channel known to you.

Gleanings From Spring Internet World 96 In San Jose

Thanks to the Web marketers who gathered at the Sizzler on April 30th. It was great to meet each of you!

Two foot-wearying days trudging through the six acres of exhibit booths gleaned several items of interest to small business Web marketers.

• E-Mail to Fax Services. Two companies provide a service which turns e-mail into a fax sent to you. You set up an account, and are charged the long distance charges plus about 10 cents a minute in the US. For example, see Faxaway Test Drive.
• Database-Web Page Software. I am excited about a number of products which will solve problems in a cost-effective manner for my Web page customers and other business clients for whom I do consulting. Some products are ready now, others will be released "real soon now."
• Electronic Commerce "Shopping Cart" Software is becoming a hot item, much of it still "vaporware." I am pleased that the Mercantec SoftCart program we use in our stores is still the small business winner for price and performance. Several others offer some of these features for many thousands of dollars more.

Web Tales - Part IV: The Medium Delivers the Message

[Editor: This is #4 in a 6-part series by an anonymous Web marketer who is one of my clients.]

Have you ever visited any of the "worst of the web" sites? Try it. It's not only fun but offers great lessons on what not to do with your web site design. Some of what we found: backgrounds that would be truly inspired alone, but do battle with the message (i.e. text) for top honors ... wallpaper patterns that make you seasick ... a self-serving "message from the chairman," complete with formal photo that takes an eternity to download - before the text ... bright orange background, used apparently for shock value (it did!). What surprised us was that a lot of these awful sites were constructed by web "designers" and not as a do-it-yourself project.

At the opposite end of this rainbow were the plain vanilla sites, some obviously do-it-yourself, others the apparent product of the "give us a couple of hundred dollars and we'll get your web page up in a day" types. With all the inherent strengths the Web has under the hood, you might as well get your Ferrari out of storage (yeah, right) to drive three blocks to the supermarket.

This is not to say that we had a clue on how to do it well. We didn't. Neither did our designer at first, and that's a very good thing. We both started out with a clean slate, with no preconceived notions on what the site "should" look like. We allowed the content to take its own shape, and great design evolved as we e-mailed ideas back and forth.

We were happy to have Wilson experiment while constructing our site, refining our ideas, mixing, matching, tossing up embellishments from an apparently-bottomless bag of visual goodies, and occasionally coming up with genuinely inspired solutions to enliven a couple of so-so pages. Once or twice during the design phase, we tapped into our under-construction site and found an eye-popping improvement to our own inspired -- or so we thought -- ideas. We were finally ready for prime time with an attractive, readable layout: columns, rather than across-the-screen text; bullet points and divider lines color coordinated with our logo and background, photos, graphics, and a consistent "look" across the many pages of our site. We were very pleased, but ... how would our visitors react? Next time: the Moment of Truth.

E-Mail to the Editor

"In your issue 12 of Web Marketing Today you drop a bible quote. This offends me. I have my own religious beliefs which I consider a personal matter. I respect the views of others, but I resent having them impose their views upon me. If you intend to use your business newsletter as a religious soapbox then you will be losing at least this reader, and probably many more. Don't jeopardize an otherwise good project by mixing business and religion." - John D.

John, I hardly intend WMT as a soapbox for religion. But I strongly believe that if we business people don't mix our religion and ethics into our businesses we harm ourselves, our businesses, and our nation. If a single Bible verse offends you, so be it. My faith is part of who I am, and will naturally be part of how I communicate. -- Ralph F. Wilson, Editor