Mozak Design Blog

Craigslist – Advertising for Free!

Craigslist is one of the most popular websites on the Internet and presents you with a great marketing opportunity for your small business. The Internet has provided the world with a huge marketplace where people can advertise and market their goods or services.  Craigslist is a website that allows users to sell anything from furniture to real estate. It is a listing of classified ads that include job placements, personal ads, ads for home supplies, ads for pet food, ads for website designs for small business, etc. Craigslist is a flea market that is online and used by millions all over the world. 

People who visit Craigslist are looking for something that they want to purchase. If you advertise some product or service that suits their interest, you are bound to have an increased traffic to your website that converts to sales. For instance, a web design company based in Portland may advertise their services in Craigslist to expand their business worldwide.

Since the Craigslist site is conveniently divided into regions, it is very easy to place your ads in the city or country of your choice. Your ads will be displayed on the site for 45 days, but after that you can re-list them if you so desire.

Craigslist ads are given top rankings by search engines, especially Google. So, expect an increased flow of traffic to your site within a week of posting your ad at Craigslist. SEO web design for your web page ensures a good ranking at search engine listings. Make use of the same SEO techniques to design your ad by using the relevant keywords to ensure top-ranked listings.

There are a number of websites that allow you to post free ads. Posting ads at sites like Yahoo Classifieds, Backpage, Highland Classifieds or USFreeads will also help to increase traffic to your site. However, the volume of traffic generated through Craigslist posting is much higher than any of the other free classifieds sites available. This is the reason that Craigslist is so popular among net surfers.

Squidoo – It’s Truly Amazing!

There are numerous websites that allow you to create a web-page for any topic under the sun. One among them is Squidoo.com. It is a fairly recent site, created by Seth Godin, a marketing expert. The site is greatly popular among internet users for driving traffic to their own sites; in other words, it is a great marketing tool.

Squidoo web pages are known as ‘lenses’. Anyone can create a Squidoo lense. For this, you need not be a technical wizard, as you can have a lense of your own in three easy steps. The best part is that you can include all kinds of modules to make a site that is interactive and keeps your visitors involved.

Here are some examples of what you can include in your lense to SEO your small business:

• Creating Text Blocks enables you to make blog entries or post your articles.
• Setting up an interactive poll will keep your visitors involved in your business.
• You can keep your lense updated and active by allowing the visitors to give their comments. You may ask them to link their own lense to yours.

The best part of Squidoo is that it has the capability to drive appropriate traffic to your website, which in turn translates into large volumes of sales. Besides, you can also provide links to products sold on eBay, Amazon and other product vending sites. What’s more, you earn a commission for any sale that has taken place from these links!  And mind you, Squidoo.com is completely free!

Search engines like Google usually top rank long tail keyword phrases at Squidoo. You can thus create a network of lenses on Squidoo to target keyword phrases that will direct the search engines to your site. It is always a good practice to include some readable and informative content in the lense in order to target the visitors to your main site.

However, if the lense for your particular keyword is already in existence, you may need to get it transferred or purchase it. This is an ideal situation for you because you are getting a readymade lense without making any effort.

The early bird small businesses users of Squidoo.com are already earning the benefits. You can do it too. Since search engine optimization or SEO is the backbone of internet businesses, each relevant keyword phrase can have a squidoo lense devoted to it.

Expand your Business with Google AdWords

Today, the Internet has become a way of life. From imparting knowledge to selling goods to providing services, the internet promotes all kinds of business. Therefore, most of the business ventures are going online and there is cut-throat competition in all areas of business. Advertising your business helps to gain an edge you’re your competitors and therefore entrepreneurs are spending huge sums of money on advertising.

An effective method of online advertising is to use Google AdWords. Google is the most popular search engine and over 80% of Internet users prefer the Google network. Since Google has a wide reach, it brings in a large amount of traffic to your website. This translates into more sales and profits for the business owner.

Some of the advantages of using Google AdWords are discussed below:

• Google AdWords is a simple and convenient way to advertize as once the link has been set up, the ad can be run immediately. They also have convenient pay-per-click schemes for ad campaigns.
• It is advantageous for small business websites that operate on a budget. Owners of such small or new businesses can put a limit on their budget per day and choose to stop the running of the ad once they reach the fixed limit.
• Advertisers have a control over their ad campaign; they can edit or improve their ads anytime they need to do so.

Google AdWords provides target marketing:

Using Google AdWords to advertise your online business is an effective tactic to increase the traffic to your website. This kind of advertising reaches the target market and increases sales leads. Online surfers are searching for a particular product or service; hence, they will click the relevant ad links in order to find what they want. Getting a high listing in the search engine results page is the goal of the website owner. By using specific keywords in the ad campaign, Google AdWords assists the web owner to achieve this goal.

Retaining customers:

It is one thing to attract customers to your website, quite another to retain them and entice them to buy your product. First impression is the last impression, so make sure that your home page is attractive, informative and interesting to viewers. Anticipate your customers’ needs and provide the relevant information about your product in a lucid manner. The website should be user friendly and easy to navigate. You cannot afford to lose your customers to the competitors just because of a badly designed site.