Gift Baskets

Please note we are not affiliated with 3rd party marketing companies and cannot guarantee the success of your campaign. However, we do care about your success and hope these free resources and tips will help get you started, or give you some ideas how to successfully market your online gift basket website.

* Submit to the Search Engines
* How do I get my site listed on search engines and directories?
* Search Engine Marketing
* Selling through online magazines

* Banner Advertising
* Keywords
* Popularity Measurements
* Linking Resources
* Other Great Resources

Submit to the search engines:

When you have your website completed and meta-tags inserted, submit your site to as many search engines and directories as you can. Do this every 30 days, because search engines are constantly changing their algorithms and the way they list.

*Note: Do NOT do this in less than a 30 day grace period, otherwise some of the search engines will view you as SPAM & will not list you at all.

*Note 2: Site submissions can generate A LOT of SPAM! Consider an email address specifically for this purpose. There are a lot of free email solutions available (Hotmail & Yahoo are the most common), but remember to delete your emails weekly. If your email box is full, your email will bounce and your submissions may be rejected.

Search engine optimization can actually be one of the best ways to advertise & one of lowest costs if you?re willing to do some of the work yourself. Some simple guidelines for you site are:

* Use keywords in your title.
* Use meta tags and keywords throughout your site.
* Use keywords correctly throughout the text on your pages.

* Use keywords in your URL.
* Concentrate on gaining link popularity.
* Use a crisp, clean design throughout your site for uniformity.
* Avoid SPAM tactics to increase website placement.

If you want to find out what keywords have been searched and their frequency, go to Overture’s Keyword Suggestions type in your keyword ideas, for example: ?gifts?. This will pull up all combinations of words using ?gifts? searched on during the previous month. Use these as ideas for building your own keyword suggestions.

How do I get my site listed on search engines and directories?

Getting listed on search engines is not automatic when your site is live. The SubmitPlus.com service is a great way to first submit your site to search engines. This method is recommended to announce your site even if it is not complete yet.
http://submitplus.com/freeprograms.php?b=top10

For more info on search engines in general, see www.searchenginewatch.com.

Search Engine Marketing:

Overture

Overture Delivers Results You Can’t Ignore. Overture search listings reach 80% of active U.S. Internet users with just one buy Overture results are included on major sites like: MSN, Yahoo!, InfoSpace, Lycos, AltaVista, and Netscape. You set the price you’re willing to pay for each sales lead and pay only when your customers click through to your site. Independent research shows that advertisers receive the highest ROI from pay-for-placement search when compared to other forms of advertising.

Google Adwords

Google.com offers a targeted search engine that indexes & ranks Web sites (over 1 billion pages) and conducts over 150 million searches a day. Google also licenses its technology to more than 100 companies, including portal giants America Online. Google employs page ranking and text-matching technology to find web sites that are relevant to a user’s search.

Google launched “Google AdWords Select” in February 2002 using the cost-per-click model, similar to other paid placement programs offered by Overture and other services. Using AdWords, you can buy search engine traffic for as little as $0.05 per click. This is a highly effective way to attract cheap, targeted traffic to your website.

Selling through online magazines:

Ezine Directories

Ezines are online publications that are similar to the regular magazines you buy in a store. Like magazines, ezines contain information on a specific topic. Ezines are popular. As many as 5 out of 10 internet users subscribe and read at least one weekly.

The terms ezine and newsletter are interchangeable.

Magatopia
http://www.magatopia.com/

Etext Archives
http://www.etext.org/index.shtml

The Ezine Directory
http://www.ezine-dir.com/

Ezine Universe
http://www.ezine-universe.com/

Ezine Resources

Best Ezines

http://bestezines.com/

Ezine Ad Auction
http://www.ezineadauction.com/

Banner Advertising:

You can use almost any image or drawing program to make a banner. If you do not have a program like PhotoShop, Coral Draw or Fireworks, you may want to try one of the following easy banner making tools:

Banner Generator
http://www.coder.com/creations/banner

3D Text Maker
http://www.3dtextmaker.com/

Ad Designer
http://www.addesigner.com/

Creative Connectivity
http://www.crecon.com/newbanners.html

Quick Banner
http://www.quickbanner.com/

Banner Designers

If you do not want to make a banner yourself any graphic designer should be able to do one for you for between $50-$250. There are a number of high quality budget banner designers online, some of them include:

Joe Banner
http://www.joebanner.com/

Banner4u
http://www.banner4u.net/

CoolClick
http://www.coolclick.com/

Banner Networks

It is difficult for individual website owners to attract quality advertisers, that is why banner networks have become very popular. Banner networks allow independent website owners to apply to join their network. Once approved you are issued a small piece of banner code you can place on your website. This code rotates a number of banners on your site and you are paid for either each impression, click or lead.

Some of the leading banner networks are:

FastClick
http://www.fastclick.com/

Burst Media
http://www.burstmedia.com/

Keywords:

Key Word Density Tool
http://www.keyworddensity.com/

High search engine ranking requires your pages to maintain optimum word depth and keyword density. Keyword density is the ratio of a keyword or key phrase to the total words (depth) on a page. Keyword density is a critical aspect of search engine optimization. To rank highly, your keyword density must not be too high or too low. A density of 1% to 7% is generally considered good. This fast and accurate keyword density analyzer is 100% free.

Market Leap – Keyword Verification
http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm

Verify your website’s placement with the Internet’s Top Search Engines and Directories. Their verification tool checks to see if your site is in the top three pages of a search engine result, for a specific keyword. It?s important to be in the top 3 pages of a search result because most people using search engines don?t go past the 3rd page.

Popularity Measurements

Market Leap – Link Popularity Analysis
http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm

Link popularity analysis is one of the best ways to quantifiably and independently measure your website’s online awareness and overall visibility. Simply put, link popularity refers to the total number of links or “votes” that a search engine has found for your website.

Marketleap has designed this link popularity tool to help website owners find out who is linking to their site, but also to give a useful benchmarking report to quickly show where you stand in comparison to competitors and other major online players.

Link Popularity Check
http://www.linkpopularitycheck.com/

The number of links to your site from other sites is key to the success of your site. The more links there are, the easier you are to find and the more traffic you will get. The WebPosition Link Popularity Check will search Lycos/AllTheWeb, MSN, AltaVista to determine how many pages on the Internet contain links to your site. You can then list other sites to compare your site to and see how you stack up!

Market Leap – Search Engine Saturation Measurement
http://www.marketleap.com/siteindex/default.htm

Your Search Engine Saturation simply refers to the number of pages a given search engine has in its index for your website domain. Not all search engines report this information but enough of them do to create some meaningful benchmarks for your search engine marketing campaigns.

Check your Search Engine Saturation levels and compare your website to competitors on a regular basis to see if your Search Engine Saturation is climbing or falling.

Linking Resources:

The Easy Way to Find Link Swap Partners – LinkPartners.com

Other Great Resources: (Links to resources will open in a new window.)

http://www.ad2go.com/ads/index.html
http://www.jimworld.com/tools/keyword-analyzer/

http://wordtracker.com/
http://www.searchengines.com/
http://www.searchenginewatch.com
http://www.spiderfood.net
http://www.linkpopularity.com/

http://www.marketingblast.com/
Submit Your Site to Over 50 Search Engines!

Search Engine List