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Internet Marketing |
There are quite a few ways to market your website. The most important of
all these is coming up on Search Engines (SE). When most people want to find something on
the web, they use a search engine. Most of us are familiar with the major general search
engines; google.com, yahoo.com and msn.com. Millions of searches are conducted on search
engines like these everyday. People are searching for your website and the products and
services you offer. So how would they find you? Through techniques called Search Engine
Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
There are two fundamentally different types of Search Engine back ends:
- Site directories and
- Spidering search engines
Site directories have databases that are built by a person manually inputting the data
about websites. Most of these website directories include the url, name of the company,
and description in their database.
Spidering search engines take an extremely different approach. They use robots or spiders
to continually read web pages, the robot parses the page and adds the page's content its
database, thereby automating the process.
There are three different methods for getting into spidering search engines.
- Free Site Submission
- Paid Inclusion
- Links from other Sites
Getting into the database of search engines is just the beginning. The SE might send a
robot/spider to your site in the next few weeks, or months, maybe never. There are other
factors that come into play, and without these other factors you will not rank in the top
positions, a necessity for website traffic. So how do you achieve this? To rank well in the
Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), you will need to perform Search Engine Optimization.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most complex aspects of web
development. Each search engine uses a different algorithm. These algorithms consist of
hundreds of factors, and these factors are constantly changing, and they are carefully
guarded trade secrets. Because of this, no one knows with 100% certainty the perfect way
to optimize a site, except those who are in the employ of the search engines. However, there
are individuals called search engine optimizers, they constantly study the methods and
techniques and have armed themselves with a set of skills that have proven rate of success.
In general, there are two areas to focus on for top rankings: Solid Code and Linking.
Soild code involves having experienced programming behind the website and comprehensive
copy, which includes keywords. Linking is primarily having links to your website from other
web pages that are already in the SE's database.
Natural rankings are still one of the most important ways to drive traffic. Search engines
now seek to reward ethical, high-quality websites with top rankings and remove inappropriate
"spam" websites. While natural rankings can produce continual free traffic, it takes effort
and time from an experienced individual to achieve optimum results; it can take months to get
listed. There will be expenses involved to setup and maintain any search engine marketing
campaign.
If you need top rankings quickly, there are ways such as pay-per-positioning (PPP), to get
higher ranking. PPP listings use a bidding process to rank sites. If you are the top bidder,
meaning that you are willing to pay the most per click on a given phrase, you will have top
placement. Please note that this can be a very costly process, and you should weigh it against
your return on investment (ROI) to asses its worth. For integrity reasons, the major search
engines (Yahoo.com, MSN.com and Google.com) do not offer higher rankings for a fee.
Although Search Engine placement is the most popular form of Internet Marketing, there are
many other ways to advertise your products, services and your website. Some of the many other
marketing tools are placing banner ads on other sites, listing on affiliate sites and other
strategies including email newsletters and promotional emails. Please note that using email as
way to promote your site has a downfall: SPAM. These days, spammers are taking over our
inboxes, so you must have permission from the client, before sending them any promotional
emails, and also try not to do it more than once a month or you may be considered spam.
If you are interested in Internet Marketing you may contact Envision Blue, we can help
you asses SEM campaign, and assign you an expert to develop and implement the strategy.
You can also choose how much you want to do in-house. We understand that the costs of hiring
an expert may offset your ROI: We are happy to do an initial consultation, develop an SEM
strategy, then hand it off to your internal staff to perform implementation and ongoing
management.
Internet Marketing Campaigns Starting at $300!
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