Internet Marketing

How to Grow Your Business on the Web

SEO helps to maximize your position in the search engine ranking for your desired keywords.
Email marketing is a proven, highly effective way to promote your website, communicate with your customers, and increase revenues.

Powerful, effective Internet marketing is more important than ever before. In 2012, Internet users in the U.S. reached 239 million people, or 76% of the total population.To maximize your company’s sales, you really need to maximize your Internet marketing efforts. You need to make sure to integrate each of the following Internet marketing concepts into your company’s marketing program.

Does Your Ad Click?

Pay per click (PPC), is how to gain traffic to your Website by buying ads on search engines. The way it works is when someone clicks an advertisement on a given search engine’s page, you pay the owner of the site for that click.

With most search engines, advertisers will bid on certain keywords that are important for their target market. The most popular sites that feature PPC ads are Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter. The keys to success in paid search marketing are to target the correct keywords, writing effective advertising copy that attracts customers, and using a landing page that sells.

Search Engine Optimization – SEO

When a user types a search phrase into a search engine, the engine attempts to match the words with words from web pages that are in its database. It then will provide users with a list of matching websites. Obviously, the websites listed at the top get more clicks, and consequently, more revenue. Once you have implemented a proper SEO strategy on your website, there’ll be several benefits:

• Long-Term Standing –Your page rank should last a long time, with some routine maintenance. You won’t need to constantly spend advertising dollars to maintain your sales.
• Beat the Competition – A highly optimized website is the perfect way to take down your competition over the long term in the most cost-effective manner.
• IncreasedSales – The more people who visit your site, the more customers you’lllikely attract.
• Boost Visibility – SEO works nationally, internationally and locally. You can dominate the local market in your area, as well as around the country and world.

SEO helps to maximize your position in the search engine ranking for your desired keywords. There are many SEO techniques, but most experts agree the most important thing is to have original content that’s interesting to your readers. Also, use keywords in the titles, headings, links, images, videos and metadata.

There are many fine SEO companies that can help you to maximize your firm’s position in the search rankings. There also are companies to avoid. You should get referrals to quality SEO companies, and talk with their current customers to see how satisfied they are.

Search Engine Marketing – SEM

This is a type of Internet marketing that promotes a website by boosting its visibility in the results of search engine searches. SEM is done by SEO optimization and advertising, which may include paid placements, paid inclusions and contextual advertising. SEM also can refer to many types of website marketing, including SEO. SEM also involves other skills, including link development, search engine advertising and specialized SEO, for video, mobile, and local websites.

Social Media

Social media marketing increases traffic to your website by using social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.Of course, “social media” is a bit of a catch-all phrase for websites that often provide very different social actions and interactions. Twitter allows you to share very short messages with other people. Facebook is a full-on social networking site that lets you share photos, updates, join events and much more. LinkedIn is generally regarded as being more business-oriented.

Using social media to promote your company or its products can result in many more people learning about what your company has to offer. One effective method to use Facebook is to create a fan page for your firm.You shouldn’t set up a personal page for a company, or Facebook will close it down. Also, be sure you add good pictures of your company’s products or depicting your services, and upload pictures from events at your company.Share posts on your company’s fan page that you think are interesting and can build interest in your products. You should be posting just about every day to keep up fan interest.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a proven, highly effective way to promote your website, communicate with your customers, and increase revenues. Over time, you’ll collect the email addresses of your clients and prospects, and you will send them emails messages or newsletters that have special offers, specials and product information.Keep in mind that you must have the permission of the company or the person to use that email address for your purposes. Typically, this is done through what is called the double opt-in process. The subscriber will fill out a form on your site giving his name and email address, and his permission to send him emails. Then, that subscriber will need to click a confirmation link that your website sends by email.

One of the keys to successful email marketing, and to prevent unsubscribes and spam complaints, is to send out emails and newsletters with helpful information for your clients and prospects. Don’t just send them emails selling your product. Give them useful informationfeaturing solid content. For example, if you sell lawn equipment, you could send out a monthly newsletter with tips on lawn care for a given season.

There are many email marketing companies on the Internet today that can help you send out your emails. Such companies as Streamsend, Campaigner and Constant Contact are very competitively priced. If you have an email list of just a few hundred subscribers, the cost per month is very low. You also may purchase email marketing software for your own computer and server. This can be extremely effective and cost efficient, but you’ll need to have some degree of technical skill to manage this.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a technique where you create and distribute relevant and valuable content to customers and prospects with the intent to attract a target audience. The end goal, of course, is to drive a profitable customer action for your company. This is done by delivering useful, unique and helpful information to your target audience. The idea behind content marketing is if you deliver valuable content to potential buyers, they’ll eventually reward you with business and loyalty.

And it works. Content marketing is used by P&G, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and John Deere. It also is used by many small businesses and it’s very effective. One of the most usefulways to do content marketing is to write guest blog posts in your marketing niche. If you provide your target audience with useful information, you’ll often be able to drive more traffic to your website, and consequently, more business.

Conclusion

There you have it — Internet Marketing 101. Mastering all of the marketing techniques described above is essential for you to maximize your profits in today’s global economy. By using these proven marketing tools effectively, you’ll be able to drive your 2013 profits higher than ever.