Business Builders

Overview of Online Marketing

This article’s aim is to provide a very broad explanation of online marketing for beginners. I will try not to go to deep into each one just yet but will add links to the articles if you need more information in the future. Ok, enough about that, let’s dive in!

 1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - basically this refers to driving traffic to a website from search engines by targeting keywords. Simply driving traffic to a website is not sufficient as there are many services that offer this for free, e.g. 10,000 visitors to your website in 7 days - in most of the cases these are fake hits that are done by other computers, not users. Good SEO, in theory, should focus on delivering higher volume, quality, industry related visitors.

In order to obtain this traffic, search engine must deem your website as relevant to the keywords that the user is searching for. This can be done by targeting keywords with genuine, helpful, original text. It is also very important to have website link to you which leads to the second form of Online Marketing.

 2) Link Building - This is the process of building incoming links to your website in order to naturally move your website up in search engines for keywords. Websites that link to you should be industry related. However, be careful not to have incoming links that can hurt your website. Usually these links are from link farms, which are websites dedicated just to links and offer no real value. More on this later.

Another thing to keep in mind while building links to your website is to make sure that keywords are being targeted in the link. An example of this would look like this.

e.g. Business builders was created to help grow your business.

This is accomplished by creating what is called an anchor link that looks like this: 

<a href=”http://www.businessbuilders.net”>grow your business</a>

 The more relevant links you have incoming to your website, the better. Also, it is good to not have too many outgoing links from your website to others. You should not have more than 10-20 outgoing links per page maximum.

 3) Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) - This is a form of advertising found on search engines, blogs, advertising networks and more where advertisers pay only when there ad is clicked on by a visitor. One of the largest providers of pay per click advertising is Google. The most basic example of a PPC can be found on the top and right of search results. They are marked with a Sponsored Links tab. Google has created an algorithm that will allow your ad to show up only for relevant keywords and searches.

 4) Copy writing- A key component to good SEO as mentioned in #1 is fresh original content. It is very important to have relevant copy/content on your website that targets keywords. Often times this process can be a bit grueling as it requires a lot of time and patience to create fresh content that includes your keywords without sounding like a robot. The content needs to be written for humans, not for search engines. Trying to create a page with one keywords used 500 times will end up hurting you more than helping you. Search engine algorithms have increased measures to prevent this. Your keywords should make up no more than 3% of your content spread out evenly throughout your page. It is also a very good idea to include the keywords in the title of the page.

 5) Email Marketing- This is a great way to target a list of people that want to learn more about your products or services. Generally you obtain these email addresses from an opt field on your website that the subscriber has signed up for on their own will.  You can also purchase lists but these will not be as targeted and almost never produce sufficient results as they have been purchased many times over and are often stale. There are many services out there like www.constantcontact.com that will help maintain your email newsletters and monitor the statistics of them (track how many people read the email, how many people clicked on the links or offers, etc).

 6) Social Media Networking- This form on online marketing allows you to interact and share information on giant networks of people and groups. Some larger networks include: MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and more.  Social Media Networking can be highly effective and often times can really help with your natural search engine results if done right. I will write more on this later as it deserves it’s own entry.

 7) Viral Marketing- This is a form of online advertising that has worked wonders for some.  Viral marketing generally uses a catchy video, flash, picture, article or other form of media to help spread it’s brand. The idea is that one person sees the product or service and passes it along to 3+ people and the effect continues on. YouTube is an excellent resource to do this with since it is free.

  Blogging - One of the easiest and most beneficial ways to keep your content fresh is to blog about your industry. You have chosen your industry presumably for the reason that you are an expert or have a special talent that you can capitalize on.  That being said - why not share what you know?  Adding a blog to your website can be a sound investment as they generally perform well in search engines. 

These topics will be discussed in further detail with examples, links and much more over the next few months. Please check back for the latest online marketing techniques.

Tags: online marketing, SEO