Off Page Marketing

Marketing strategies that are “off” of your web page are designed to bring targeted traffic to your site. There are two types of traffic you want to attract. You want traffic that increases your optimization with the search engines and you also want traffic that converts into real customers. Click here for more on On Page Marketing if you haven’t read about marketing to users who already made it to your site.

The mental trap of conversion obsession

Off Page Marketing is Optimization

Which type of traffic should go first? Many people believe it is foolish to not try to convert every visitor to a customer. They feel they are failing immediately when they see visitors coming to their site and not buying.

If your off page marketing strategy completely focuses on getting a 100% conversion rate, likely your decisions are going to be guided by a short term impatience that will work against you in the long run. This has destroyed many great business plans. Having patience does not mean moving slow or delaying important decisions.

What is the best source for traffic that really converts well?

Optimization brings real customers who are already prepared, with their credit card out, to buy what you have. That is called “commercial intent.” According to Microsoft’s Commercial Intent Tool, users who type in a Google or Yahoo “search engine optimization companies” have a commercial intent rating of 72.346%  and are far more likely to be looking to hire someone than a person who types in “website optimization” which has a lower rating of 47.087% . The intent behind a keyword makes all the difference between a buyer and someone just researching something.

How do I position my site to get high commercial intent users?

Ask yourself, can I get my website in a position to attract visitors who type in high commercial intent type of keywords if all I focus on is conversions? What does it take to get my site on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN search results for keywords with high commercial intent?

The cost of trying to target high commercial intent keywords through Pay Per Click, Pay Per View, or other advertising methods is extremely expensive because those who bring you those types of users know their value.

Overlooking optimization as form of marketing is costly

Do you want reoccurring advertising costs where your customer flow ends immediately when you quit paying top dollar? That is what being short sited will bring you, never ending high conversion advertising costs. Many make millions of dollars doing that but likely if you are reading this then that is not where you are at in life.

If you are reading this you probably have a business or want to start a business and want to avoid paying 3-5 thousand per month for optimization. You know the value of dominating your money keywords and are looking to reign in the costs by doing yourself or training your staff to do it.

More to optimization marketing than special programming code

Not that we have established that optimizing for high commercial intent keywords is key to long term conversion rates, we can move on to discussing the types of off page marketing you can do to make that happen. There is more to internet marketing than pure code optimization. You have to have the right kind of marketing that many call “off page optimization.”

Off page marketing requires staff in USA or overseas

Off page optimization is just internet marketing. There is not secret tricks that work long term. It just takes hard repetitive work to get where you need to be. We recommend hiring overseas people who know computers and the internet anywhere but India. The costs are just too high there. You don’t need programmers or graphic designers for marketing. Just regular computer savvy people will work.

Great sources of overseas marketing employees

South East Asia, lower Russia and South America are full of people willing to work full time for $300 per month. It creates a job for them and allows you a chance to build your business without drowning in payroll. You or your US staff will have to of course train, monitor, and direct them but it is well worth it.

Set up video conferencing and live chat to keep track of marketers

Set up live video chat or at least regular chat with your employees, you and any overseas staff you may have. Set up training videos or power point presentations that explain to them what they will be doing. Make work flow charts for them that outline step by step what they are expected to do and in what exact order they will do it. Give them examples of problems they will run into and simple solutions to get around them.

Offer potential partners traffic to get the communication going

Once that is accomplished you can begin your marketing. The best source of real customer traffic, that doesn’t come from search engines, is usually going to come from trade partnerships. Find a website that you can put an ad on their site or they can include your offer in an up sale to their users for a commission.

If your product or service naturally compliments their own they are likely to think it will bring value to their customer experience. Start your offers by offering to put their ads on your site and their ads in your up sale process. Offering to send them traffic or customers will open the door to communication.

Affiliate networks send pay per acquisition traffic

Pay per acquisition means you only pay when you get a buying customer. Set your site up in affiliate networks like Commission Junction, Hyrdra, Link Share, Click Bank, Click Booth and others. There are set up fees but it is worth it. Affiliate networks allow marketers to sell your products or services for a commission.

There are some technical aspects to installing the tracking code but remember their is a step by step tutorial on anything somewhere on the web. Affiliates will send you targeted traffic and when a sale is made, the affiliate network bills you and pays the affiliate who sent you the traffic. You don’t pay for traffic that does not convert to a sale.

Buying links does work but maybe not forever

Buying links is very popular today but search engines vow to penalize sites who attempt to sell links for optimization purposes. If you buy a link make sure that it brings real customers. If you do buy a link for optimization purposes never pay for a link that is not on the home page or if there are more than 5 other links that look like they were bought. Pages with many many links don’t transfer Page Rank very well and are not worth your time or money even if they are a page rank of 8 or 9.

Optimization is the best for conversions and that means back links

The best source of traffic comes from optimization. So your true source of off page marketing will come from your link building campaigns. Trade partnerships, affiliate links, and purchased links all contribute to optimization especially if they are with giant sites with massive traffic. That is not likely going to be the case for any site just starting out.

Reputable news links are the most powerful traffic getting links

Powerful news links are where all the juice is and second to that is blog links. You can get news links with press releases, media promotions, and various gimmicky stunts.You can sponsor kids or some type of charitable foundation but normally that will only bring a local news report. Making the news in a big way is very difficult but very worth it.

Blog links are great and they are easy to get if you have the time

Blogging on other sites is a great source of back links to your site as long as the keywords are similar. Not many sites actually generate real customers this way it is typically for optimization purposes only. There are also government links (.gov) and education links (.edu) that bring a lot of SEO juice but they are very difficult to get. Make sure you build your links the correct way.

Click here for more information on building a great link building strategy.