Because of the growing popularity of the Internet all types of businesses both offline and online have had to modify their marketing strategies in order to stay in touch with their markets. More traditional kinds of advertising (Outbound Marketing), such as trade shows, telemarketing, and print advertising where advertisers send out a message hoping that it attracts a few customers, is starting to decline. The main reason being people are becoming more educated on how to avoid such media by using caller ID to avoid telemarketers and TIVO to skip past television commercials. As a result business has had to conform to the times.
Today the vast majority of consumers are beginning the buying process online and industry has had to transform their whole approach to marketing in order to adapt. To stay competitive companies have to make sure they’re found online by people searching for their products. This has led to the development of a whole new form of advertising called inbound marketing. Inbound marketing techniques include search engine optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), and blogging.
Because of these changes one of the top priorities for any type of venture is being found on the Internet. If your customers and potential clients can’t find your product or service online then staying competitive will be nearly impossible in today’s new environment. Search engines now play a vital role in directing people to your website. When someone is searching online for a certain product and enter a specific phrase in a search engine then your home page must come up at least on the first or second page of search results in order for them to find you and your site.
There are two ways to get ranked by the major search engines online such as Google and Yahoo. One way is to pay for the results by using pay per click (PPC) listing. Using this method you pay every time someone clicks on the link in your advertisement. The key, pardon the pun, to PPC listing is your advertisement must contain certain key words contained in the search phrase. The search engine recognizes these keywords and the price per click increases with the popularity of the keyword. The search engines then rank your site based on keywords and page content and inbound links.
The second ranking method is based on organic search results which are calculated by the relevance of the search terms, the extent of the keyword match and the number of links into your website. There are two advantages of organic results: they are free and they are more popular because people click on them 75% of the time as compared to 25% for paid results.
When trying to get ranked by employing keywords use phrases which your market seems to be using to search for your product. Also place keywords on your website in the page text, url, title, and heading. Link building is also a very effective means of attracting search engines. Inbound links from other sites into your site and links from trusted sites also provide an advantage.
Another method used to get ranked by the search engines is blogging. A blog, also called a web log, is a site that you regularly update with content such as articles. If you’re into article writing, for example, you can publish to different article directories with links to your website contained in the biography box of each article you write. This is an excellent method of driving targeted traffic to your website. You can also visit other blogs similar to yours and leave a comment containing a link back to your home page.
Make sure your articles are related to your website’s main interest or overall theme. Also try to attract readers by writing compelling titles to peak your visitors’ interest. Try to establish yourself as an expert in a particular field by concentrating on a certain topic such as Internet marketing for example. If people view you as an authority they will come back for more and often recommend your website to others with similar interests. Finally, be sure to promote your blog to family and friends and anyone else who will listen especially on social media sites.
These are just a few ways to get found online and in order to survive and prosper on the web today you must treat the search engines as your best friend and feed them what they want on a regular basis.
Bob Withers