Software Marketing - The SEO Strategy
Software Marketing - The SEO Approach
Software Marketing comes in many different perspectives. Depending on if consumers (via standard software package sales) or business or enterprise are your target customers, your software marketing strategy will differ greatly.
This short and sweet article is going to go over relatively low cost but capable strategy that will kick off your online software marketing with effective middle to long term results. We will focus standalone packages that you will make obtainable for sale from your website, or software directories.
If you sell b2b custom software you can still use the information in this article if you be a little creative!
We want to get the low hanging fruit or the "quick wins" out of the way first, therefore we are going to want to focus on these 8 basic steps.
Website Design
Its critical (obviously) to have a competent looking website, designed well, with copy that gets your visitors to do what you want them to do. Most visitors wont purchase your software directly from your website, but rather after getting your software from elsewhere (software directories etc). They will definitely check your website before buying your product, to make sure you seem legit, can offer support etc. Therefore keep it professional!
Keyword Research
You need to get a basic understanding of what words and search phrases people would use when trying to find your software or the problem it provides a solution for. There are many tools and services will show you what search phrases are used on the search engines and the estimated number of searches a month. This allows you to know exactly what search phrases or keywords you need to focus on and provides a picture of the potential market size by search volume.
Competitive Research
The Internet allows you, quite easily, to tell exactly what marketing your competition is doing, the ads they use, the copy they use, where they advertise and who their affiliates are. Take advantage of the $$ and time they spent on market research and testing and simply copy and improve on their strategy!
Download.com Listing
This critical step requires you to create yourself a well written, professional download.com listing for your software, making use of your 1-3 top keywords you found via your keyword research. Download.com has great "ranking power" in the search engines and is seen as a trusted domain by google.
Software Submissions
Here we will take advantage of one of the many great manual software submission services (costs more - gets you more listings) or automated software submission tool (unlimited submissions for the upfront cost - less reliable) to submit our software to 600-1000 software directories. This gets you instant downloads, and if you know how, will greatly improve the search engine rankings for your main software listing!
Deep Links
We now use deep links to push our main listing up into the top of the search results in the search engines. Deep link directories and submission services are not that easy to find, but there are some great ones out there if you know where to look!
Link Building
The initial strategy is now complete and you have set the foundations for your long term results, within minimal effort and cost. You should now get consistent downloads each month (and hopefully sales!) and a decent ranking for your listing (and the free traffic that goes with it). The plan now is to consistently generate links to your listing every month to sustain and improve on your rankings. You now want to outsource our link building through certain services such as elance.
Article Submissions
Article Marketing allows you to position yourself as an expert in your field by providing good useful information to potential customers. Have finance software? Generate quality articles around the financial topic your software targets. Show your potential customers your not just a bunch of programmers, but rather you understand their problems, their business, the niche etc and can provide software that delivers. Article submissions also generate traffic to your site and listings (and thus generate downloads) as well as links to your listings and thus better search results. A valuable use of your time!
The above steps are a good place to start for any software marketing strategy and provides a firm base to build on moving forward.
For detailed explanations and video tutorials of all the above steps including all the neat little tricks that maximize results, visit Software Marketing Magic [http://www.softwaremarketingmagic.com]
Software Marketing comes in many different perspectives. Depending on if consumers (via standard software package sales) or business or enterprise are your target customers, your software marketing strategy will differ greatly.
This short and sweet article is going to go over relatively low cost but capable strategy that will kick off your online software marketing with effective middle to long term results. We will focus standalone packages that you will make obtainable for sale from your website, or software directories.
If you sell b2b custom software you can still use the information in this article if you be a little creative!
We want to get the low hanging fruit or the "quick wins" out of the way first, therefore we are going to want to focus on these 8 basic steps.
Website Design
Its critical (obviously) to have a competent looking website, designed well, with copy that gets your visitors to do what you want them to do. Most visitors wont purchase your software directly from your website, but rather after getting your software from elsewhere (software directories etc). They will definitely check your website before buying your product, to make sure you seem legit, can offer support etc. Therefore keep it professional!
Keyword Research
You need to get a basic understanding of what words and search phrases people would use when trying to find your software or the problem it provides a solution for. There are many tools and services will show you what search phrases are used on the search engines and the estimated number of searches a month. This allows you to know exactly what search phrases or keywords you need to focus on and provides a picture of the potential market size by search volume.
Competitive Research
The Internet allows you, quite easily, to tell exactly what marketing your competition is doing, the ads they use, the copy they use, where they advertise and who their affiliates are. Take advantage of the $$ and time they spent on market research and testing and simply copy and improve on their strategy!
Download.com Listing
This critical step requires you to create yourself a well written, professional download.com listing for your software, making use of your 1-3 top keywords you found via your keyword research. Download.com has great "ranking power" in the search engines and is seen as a trusted domain by google.
Software Submissions
Here we will take advantage of one of the many great manual software submission services (costs more - gets you more listings) or automated software submission tool (unlimited submissions for the upfront cost - less reliable) to submit our software to 600-1000 software directories. This gets you instant downloads, and if you know how, will greatly improve the search engine rankings for your main software listing!
Deep Links
We now use deep links to push our main listing up into the top of the search results in the search engines. Deep link directories and submission services are not that easy to find, but there are some great ones out there if you know where to look!
Link Building
The initial strategy is now complete and you have set the foundations for your long term results, within minimal effort and cost. You should now get consistent downloads each month (and hopefully sales!) and a decent ranking for your listing (and the free traffic that goes with it). The plan now is to consistently generate links to your listing every month to sustain and improve on your rankings. You now want to outsource our link building through certain services such as elance.
Article Submissions
Article Marketing allows you to position yourself as an expert in your field by providing good useful information to potential customers. Have finance software? Generate quality articles around the financial topic your software targets. Show your potential customers your not just a bunch of programmers, but rather you understand their problems, their business, the niche etc and can provide software that delivers. Article submissions also generate traffic to your site and listings (and thus generate downloads) as well as links to your listings and thus better search results. A valuable use of your time!
The above steps are a good place to start for any software marketing strategy and provides a firm base to build on moving forward.
For detailed explanations and video tutorials of all the above steps including all the neat little tricks that maximize results, visit Software Marketing Magic [http://www.softwaremarketingmagic.com]