•  Online advertising initiatives: It is a given that some websites do not appear on major search engines but still do draw some reasonable traffic through other initiatives such as through their email service, e-newsletters and ezines, pay-per-click advertising, email campaigns, article marketing, online press releases etc.

Try to find out if the website does any of those things. Still the traffic statistics should reflect some significant hits to show that the initiatives are working for them.

Don't believe the thousands or even millions they quote unless you see hard proof, which is not so hard for them to produce.

•  Offline advertising initiatives: Some web publishers use offline means to promote their websites such as print advertising, offering coupons redeemable on their websites, word of mouth etc. Again the site traffic statistics should reflect positive recordings before you commit.

•  Uptime: Imagine going to a shop like Spar at 1pm (to buy lunch) and finding it closed right in the middle of the day. This is what normally happens to most websites. Due to system crashes or any other unforeseen circumstances a website can return a 404 error (page not found), a page which every one hates to death and can send visitors packing and never to return. Serious web publishers' sites should have at least 90% uptime. This means that 90% of the time you visit it should be up and running. Ask about this, their hosting company avails this information to them. Be careful of being fooled, if you doubt enquire about their web hosting company and call it directly to confirm.

•  Loading speed: it is a known fact that a page should take about 10 seconds to load in order to retain the surfer. Websites with a loading speed beyond that are said to lose 1/3 of their traffic [people who are not that patient].

•  Payment option: there are many payment options online, which can benefit you and the publisher at the same time. Ask about their terms of payment. A confident publisher should offer you a pay per impression payment option. That means you only pay when the site is viewed at a given number of times, usually 1000 times but you can negotiate other benchmarks.

Pay-per-click: Here you pay only when some one clicks on your advert. This is not advisable if you are dealing with small time publishers as they can not effectively control click fraud. Web giants like Google are more capable of managing this option.

Pay-per-order: alternatively you can decide to pay when some one fills in your online form and sends through their order to you. Here there is no possibility of click fraud because you only pay the publisher if someone buys your product.

There are many more methods and they can be very tricky so be very careful what you choose. Try to avoid the obvious monthly payment option unless the publisher can present satisfactory and consistent monthly traffic averages.

•  Don't be fooled by the fancy graphics and blinking banners: I won't get into too much detail on this since it can get a bit technical. What you can take from this point is that usually sites with flash graphics, pictures and all the “bling” are not search engine's favorites and are least likely to get top rankings. Remember search engines provide +90% of traffic. These engines want websites with good, keyword specific content, content and content and websites that load fast enough.

Sometimes a site may seem to have fewer graphics (using your naked eye) whilst the whole site is a large graphic image that will never be found by search engines. One way to test this is to point your mouse cursor on an item that you suspect (or anywhere withint the site) and right click if the list show an option to “save image as”, then you should know that is not a good sign.

The web is a very interesting market with vast opportunities open to every one from individuals to businesses of all sizes. If approached right the benefits can be great but is approached the wrong way the results can be detrimental. Do you want to start your own website, I strongly recommend Africahost for your complete hosting package or start by gettingt your Free 7-Part Net Marketing Course worth R250 right now.

You can get more on this by subscribing to the Infoshopswaziland.com newsletter. Click here to subscribe . We would be in a position to tell you specific sites you can use for targeting Swazi consumers or international consumers interested in the Swazi market and how you can take advantage of Search marketing, a technique popularized by Google and more other ecommerce marketing techniques.

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