10 tips - how to promote your website and online sales

Published 29th May 2007, (a Tuesday) at 09:00AM 

Use these ideas to promote your site - online and offline.

1. Write a descriptive title for each page. Use just five to eight words. This title will appear hyper-linked in search engines when your page is found.
2. Metatags. The main two types of metatags that help search engines find your webpage – description and keywords. The description should contain no more than 20 words and use relevant keywords. The description will appear in search engine listings. Keywords could be individual words or phrases that user searching for your page might type. Keywords are only read by some search engines but must be relevant to the CURRENT PAGE!
3. Make sure you have keywords in your content/webpages. Your webpage content should contain words that people are likely to type to find your pages in search engines.
4. Use Reciprocal links. Have as many “quality” incoming links to your site as possible. “Quality links” are defined as follows: Links from sites that have high search engine rankings themselves and also where the content is relevant to yours.
5. Use pay per click advertising (PPC). If you can’t wait until your website gets ranked in search engines, you may want to consider sponsored search engine adverts… such as Google PPC. You pay based on the popularity of your keywords and you can allocate a set budget for specific periods of time. PPC will instantly bring you to the top of the search engines… but with a price to pay of course!
6. Advertise in property portals. There are many property portals that you can advertise with that will instantly drive traffic to your website. Some to mention are rightmoves, findaproperty and propertyfinder. Make sure that your property management software features direct feeds to these portals, or you could be killing hours of precious time.
7. Give your visitors the full web experience that they expect. Your property website should contain all of the features that a property hunter would expect. These include property email alerts, user registration, online portfolio, 360o virtual tours etc. Your website should be powered by a content management system and a property management software – enabling you to keep your web content up-to-date and automate your web enquiries. Keeping your content up-to-date will encourage repeat visits.
8. Advertise offline. Online methods shouldn’t be the only method to promote your site. Advertise and be featured in magazines. Before you even attempt to advertise (online or offline), make sure your branding and corporate identity looks professional and represents your business in the best possible way.
9. Send out email newsletters. Send property alerts to your registered website users via an automated property matching system. But it should not stop here. Once you have a database of contacts, let them know you are here by sending a regular email newsletter. Newsletters could contain useful information as well as latest properties on the market. But remember – it is important not to spam, so do not send emails without permission.
10. Track and analyse your online campaigns and website traffic. Every link incoming link to your site – be it via email, a property portal or a banner advert should be tracked and analysed. You should know which link has converted into an enquiry and which one has led into a sale. The same goes for website traffic. You need to know where visitors are going and not going… and keep amending the design until you are achieving your desired results.