The basics of getting seen on the Internet and persuading customers to visit and return to your site. By Bruce Townsend.

Achieving business success online is not about how much money you can throw at the marketing budget. It's about attracting and keeping customers. There is no benefit in being extravagant, only in being smart. A strong customer focus, targeted cost-effective marketing and a little creative thinking can take you a long way towards establishing a successful ebusiness without risking your shirt in the process.

Get Seen in Search
Search engines are the number one source of new visitors to web sites. According to comScore, 94% of UK internet users use them, and 72% of those use Google. So getting seen on Google is the most important thing you can do to market your site online. The best way to get listed is to get links to your site from a few that are on Google already. Failing that, submit your site manually. Don't use automated submission tools, and don't submit your site to 'Link farms' that contain only links and adverts and no useful content.

Keys to the Door
When people search, they type something quite specific into the search box that describes what they are looking for. This is the 'key word' or 'key phrase'. Identifying the most popular key words and phrases in your particular market is the most important next step. You can find out for less than a fiver by subscribing to Wordtracker for a day (www.wordtracker.com). Type in some descriptive terms that are widely used in your industry, and it will identify a range of related phrases that searchers are using. It will also identify phrases that are well-used but have fewer than average relevant pages. These are your best opportunities - they represent niches where there are plenty of potential customers, but not too much competition.

The Quick Way to a Search Engine's Heart
Search engines are businesses too, and the quickest way to get listed is to pay them. Pay-per-click advertising schemes like Google AdWords sell positions in 'Sponsored Results' on an auction basis - the more you pay, the higher you are listed. For very popular keywords this can be expensive. But you can usually find more specific key phrases that are affordable, and can still generate worthwhile business. Set a strict budget and stick to it, and use a tracking system like Google Analytics to measure the results. Bid down or abandon key phrases that don't deliver, and focus on those that are cost-effective.

Go Organic
The natural or organic listings are where you most want to be - in the main body of the search results. Being here is free, but it takes some effort to rise towards the top of the rankings.

Different search engines take different things into account when deciding the order in which to list their results. Google attaches a lot of importance to the page title - the text that appears in the blue bar at the top of the browser when you view the page. In the HTML code, it is the text between the tags. For a page to rank well on Google for a particular phrase, that phrase must be included in the page title. The title should be no longer than 8-9 words - so it is difficult to optimise one page effectively for more than 2-3 phrases.

Next, Google considers the page content. It analyses how many times the phrase appears on the page; where it appears (near the top is better than near the bottom); and whether occurrences of the phrase are spread out over the page, or concentrated in one place. Work your key phrases naturally several times throughout the text of the page, starting from the top.

The most important thing from Google's point of view is the number and quality of links to your site from other well-ranked sites. It regards these as votes for your site by other members of the internet community. The more links you have from good quality, relevant pages, the better your ranking will be. Some kind of program to develop reciprocal links with other sites will be essential to your optimisation strategy. You can do this the hard way, one site at a time. Or use a product such as Zeus that will partially automate the process for you.

A Spate of Affiliates
Links are not only important for search engine optimisation. People click on them, too, and come through to your site. They are your life blood. The more you have, the more your business will grow.

One way of extending your network of links is affiliate marketing. This works a bit like pay-per-click. An affiliate agrees to provide a link from their web site to yours, and you agree to pay a certain amount for each customer who comes via their link. Generally this is on a percentage of sale basis. You can set up your own scheme using a package like All Affiliate Pro, or join an existing scheme such as Affiliate Window. The Garden Pharmacy (www.garden.co.uk), the largest online pharmacy in the UK, gets about 15% of its sales by this method. This a fairly typical percentage.

Be an Expert
Another good way to build up a network of links is to position yourself as an expert or a resource in your field. If you provide more technical information about your products than your competitors do, or buying advice, or product reviews, or an interesting blog, this will act as 'link bait' - something that naturally attracts links without you having to pay for or canvas them individually. Anything LeftHanded (www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk) is a good example of a site that promotes itself effectively in this way.

Reasons to be Cheerful
A happy customer will come back to you again and again - at no extra cost to you. So, do everything you can to keep your customers happy. Chris Brown of www.Gamble.co.uk, which sells gambling-related products, is one online retailer who attributes a large part of his success to good customer service. The business offers 24-hour delivery as standard, and someone replies to every email within hours. "This shows that real people are behind the computer should anything go wrong," he says. "It helps boost a potential customer's confidence enormously."

Online as offline, there is no silver bullet that can guarantee success. But the principles in this article at least provide a solid foundation on which to build.

About the Author

Bruce Townsend is marketing manager with ecommerce and EPOS supplier, Actinic. www.actinic.co.uk, 0845 129 4800