Less than 3 weeks away we celebrate 2008.  It’s hard to even imagine this year is finally over. We’ve been quite busy here at Big Shark with many new web design, marketing and pay per click clients.

Many people have been planning their marketing strategies for next year. I was surprised to see in some of my networking groups that many have not even thought about their Online Marketing.

If you have a web site for your business, it is crucial that you stay ahead of the times when it comes to effective marketing, promotions and conversions of your sales and services.

Here are some basic tips to consider for 2008:

• Web Site Review- How does your site look? Is it out of date? If you haven’t modified it since the late 90’s you defnitely need to!
• Test all your web pages- do they link correctly? Use a free, handy dandy tool called Xenu’s Link Sleuth (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html)
• Fix any broken links, images, or anything that seems out of whack.
• Does the site show up in both browsers- Internet Explorer and Firefox?
• Write down ideas or thoughts you have about your web site… for example, did you always want to change the colors from black and white to blue and grey? Are their outdated photos that you need to replace? Have you always wanted to add some sort of ecommerce capabilities but didn’t know how?

Marketing the Web Site:

• Do you rank in the search engines?
• Do you have Pay Per Click accounts at Google AdWords, Yahoo, MSN AdCenter, ASK, etc?
• If you do have Pay Per Click, is it working? Are you tracking conversions or any traffic data for that matter? Are you testing and re-testing ads? Do you need a professional to review the accounts and offer some insight?
• Articles and Online Press Releases- this is an area of Web Marketing that is really taking off and I suspect will be pretty big in 2008. The value is incredible- added content which helps your organic rankings in the search engines, as well as pushing the social networking to unbelievable measures. Think of Digg, Technorati, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, ETC… ETC… If you don’t know about these, make it a point in 2008 to learn. It’s FREE and very valuable.
• Email Marketing- Still a good tool for effective promotion. If  you have never sent an email to your clients defnitely do this in 2008. There are a lot of creative outlets available that shouldn’t cost a fortune. Just PLEASE look into options carefully so that you don’t spend 08 explaining your actions to ISPs who may be considering your emails as SPAM.
• Link Popularity- Also a good tool for promoting your site in the Search Engines. Also, an area you have to be careful in. Link farms, Link Spams, still exist. Only link with sites you feel will make your site better and are of value to the type of business you have.
• Videos- If you have a business that can show demonstrations of products or services, consider making a video. Places like You Tube are more than just bored teens (and adults). If you can create something that isn’t tacky, and is helpful to your online visitors, you can have another means of promotion for your business– and again FREE!.

You can have a very successful 2008 if you plan now on how to go about it. Of course, companies like Big Shark Marketing can help too! Contact us for a Free Web Site Review and Consultation, and let’s see how we can make your web site grow.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 8:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.