'Must Have' Emarketing Tools

There are lots of online tools out there to help you promote your website online.

We have listed some great tools for website rankings,  search engine optimisation, online and email marketing.

1. It’s All About Keywords

Choosing the right keywords for your site is the first step to effective marketing online. Basically we are all looking for quality leads on our website. A keyword is what a customer types into Google to conduct a search for something they are looking for. WordTracker provides you with the amount of times a keyword has been searched on in the last 24 hours. Once you know what the top keywords for your business are, you can use them on your website to attract the right leads from search engines and for building emarketing campaigns with tools like Google Adwords.

Website: www.wordtracker.com
Price: Free Trial Available
 

2. Using Keywords Effectively On Your Website

Once you know which are the right keywords for your business, you then need to make sure you have used them effectively on your website. This tool analyses your homepage and lets you know what the density of a keyword is on your webpage. In general an effective keyword will return a 3% to 10% weighting on a web page.

Website: www.keyworddensity.com
Price: Free
 

3. Measuring Visitation To Your Website

Tracking how your site is performing is all important, especially if you start to invest time and money into building your website visitation and want to gain increased sales. Google Analytics is a tool that provides really useful information about visitation to your website. Using this tool from the beginning can help provide a before and after snap shot of each marketing initiative you try and can give you very quick feedback to let you know what is working and what is not.

Website: www.google-analytics.com
Price: Free
 

4. Your Rating With Search Engines

Advanced Web Ranking is a tool that lets you know how you are performing on a variety of Search Engines for your keywords. It tracks where you are ranked for a keyword, and then each time you ask it to trawl through the Search Engines it lets you know whether your ranking has improved or not. This helps you monitor any Search Engine Optimisation that you may do to your website.
Please note: Some Search Engines do not like you using this tool, and some forbid its use, please research the Search Engine guidelines thoroughly before using this service.

Website: www.advancedwebranking.com
Price: Free trial available
 

5. Helping Search Engines Find All Of Your Web Pages

This tool trawls through your website and provides an XML sitemap. An XML sitemap is useful for listing on search engines like Google and Yahoo to make sure they have indexed all of your website pages. Doing this can help with your free listings on search engines and is recommended, although you may need the assistance of a website developer to complete this for you.

This tool also provides you a running count of pages, provides a text-based URL list and an XML sitemap you can import straight into your site.

Website: www.xml-sitemaps.com
Price: Free for sites of 500 pages or less
 

6. Advertising Your Site Online

Google ADWords is a tool that provides promotional listings on Google. These are the listings you see on the right hand side of the page when you conduct a search on Google. These listings are on a ‘pay per click’ basis, i.e. you are charged every time someone clicks on your ADWords link. You can set your account to a monthly limit to make sure you do not exceed your budget. The amount charged is based on a bidding system with popular keywords costing more than other keywords. The trick with this tool is to find the right words with Wordtracker (or similar) for your business that not many of your competitors are using, hence a lower 'pay per click' rate.

Website: adwords.google.com
Price: Depends on your monthly budget
 

7. Setting Up An Affiliate Network

ClixGalore is a large affiliate network comprising over 7500+ Merchants and many ten of thousands of Affiliates across five networks in the USA, UK, Japan, Australia and India. Like Google AdWords it runs 'pay for performance/click' internet advertising solutions for online business Merchants. This means that you only pay clixGalore when a person makes a purchase, completes a lead form or clicks on a banner. This flexibility provides Merchants with a cost effective promotions model to attract targeted, high quality customers.

For businesses seeking trackable results, clixGalore Affiliate Marketing provides comprehensive management and advanced graphic reporting tools, coupled with state of the art tracking technology that allows you to take full control of your program whilst it rapidly grows with little or no maintenance.

Website: www.clixgalore.com
Price: Depends on your monthly budget
 

8. Supporting Your Customers Online

Once you have attracted customers to your website it is important to ensure that they are supported through the purchasing process. Live Person offers services that provide customer support online including: live chat, email management, click-to-talk , and knowledgebase (self-service) technology.

Live Person’s solutions assist in increasing online sales, average order size and conversion rates, and assists in customer satisfaction.

Website: www.liveperson.com
Price: POA

9. Generating Leads To Your Website

Websites like Door One and Froogle allow you to post your products online with direct links back to your shopping cart. The advantages of these types of sites are that people search them for the ‘best deal’ on a particular product, so if you can be price competitive you can attract clicks through to your website. Additionally these sites generally have an established customer.

Like ClixGalore and AdWords these sites tend to operate on a ‘pay per performance’ basis.

Websites: www.froogle.com / www.shopping.com
Price: various
 

10. Direct Marketing To Your Customers

Once you have attracted customers to your website, the trick is to remind them to return and purchase again from you. Etools is the ideal tool for this allowing you to send out regular email communications to your customers and track the response rates including how many clicked through to the website, which links they clicked and how many times. Using this tool in conjunction with a shopping cart you can quickly tell which products your customers are interested in.

Website: www.etools.com.au
Price: POA