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Internet Marketing Basics

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ONLINE ADVERTISING BASICS – GRASSROOTS SEO 101

Here’s some old school information on internet marketing basics, or grassroots seo 101. Online advertising offers advertisers, both online and offline, an opportunity to reach very specific niche audiences and target markets that wasn’t previously possible outside of perhaps the niche and trade magazine market. The biggest difference between niche online advertising and niche print advertising is often cost. Online advertising options are often more affordable, and with new niche websites launched every day, online advertising opportunities are almost endless.

There are many different types of online advertising, from blatant advertising to subtle, seemingly natural links. Here are several common types of online advertising currently used:

1. Banner Advertising – Banner ads are image ads with a company’s or website’s logo, slogan, and advertising message (or something similar) included. Banner ads come in many different sizes, which would be determined by the space available on the publisher’s site where the advertising space is being purchased. Some banner ads are animated.

2. Sponsorships – Advertisers regularly gain exposure in online sponsorships, whether that’s sponsoring a site blatantly for a site-wide text link or banner ad, sponsoring online videos (or even limited commercial sponsorships with major TV networks offering videos online), or sponsoring something such as a free Web template, where the sponsorship link stays in tact every time a template is used.

3. Text Link Advertising – Text link ads can work similarly to banner ads, they can be site-wide links in the sidebar, footer, or other area of a publisher’s website, or they can be a text link worked into the content on one particular page on a publisher’s site.

4. Video Advertising – Video advertising can be done similarly to banner advertising using various video screen sizes, or can involve blatant advertising in essentially Web commercials released with some kind of entertainment value to video sharing sites, hoping for a viral effect of the video being shared to increase exposure.

5. Email Advertising – Email advertising is essentially purchasing banner or text link ad space within email newsletters reaching a certain target market.

6. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising / Search Engine Advertising – Pay-per-click advertisements can be purchased in text or image / banner formats, often through search engine advertising (to place in sponsored results for certain keyword phrases) or through ad publisher networks such as Google Adsense, where ads appear on publisher sites relevant to chosen advertiser keywords.

7. Online Classifieds – Online classifieds advertising works much in the same way as offline classifieds, where products, jobs, and more can be advertised to a more general market.

8. Pop-up / Pop-under Advertising – These are online ads that open a new window on a browser’s computer screen when they enter or leave a Web page or click on something. They’re often considered intrusive, and blocked automatically using pop-up blockers by many users.

Email Marketing for SEO

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EMAIL MARKETING TIPS AND TACTICS

Email marketing includes much more than just sending email newsletters to website visitors. Email marketing is an important type of Internet marketing, and allows webmasters and online business owners to use inexpensive direct marketing and relationship marketing tactics quickly and efficiently.

Here are some uses for email marketing:

1. Email newsletters
2. Email offers and coupons to past customers or visitors
3. Email surveys for market research and to measure customer satisfaction
4. Additional income stream with email advertisements or email list rentals
5. Marketing through ads purchased in others’ email marketing campaigns

Spam laws put restrictions on email marketers, from how email marketing lists can be built or gathered to the rights of email list subscribers to unsubscribe from future mailings. Follow these email marketing tips to stay out of trouble with anti-spam laws, and to build an email list with the best potential for conversions to sales, ad clicks, or more, by focusing on subscribers genuinely interested in the message.

1. Make the email list double opt-in (subscribers will sign up for the email list from a form on the website, and will have to confirm the subscription through an email before the subscription becomes active).

2. Include an ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of every email sent to the email list. Never make it difficult for someone to unsubscribe from the list.

3. Try to gather the email marketing list independently, through on-site subscription forms or subscription options being included in the online order process for customers.

4. If purchasing or renting an email marketing list, purchase only from reputable email list distributors, and purchase lists highly targeted to the site’s target market to improve the rate of interest in the email campaigns.

5. If subscribers are slow to come naturally, offer an incentive, such as a free e-book, articles, reports, software, or something similar of interest to the target readership that can be included with a welcome email or in a download.

6. To increase the probability that email newsletters and similar mailings will be read, offer both an HTML and a plain text version to account for readers who use non-HTML email providers or programs.

7. If using email newsletters for email marketing efforts, try to keep email campaigns regular, but not so often that they become a nuisance to the subscribers.

Internet Marketing Tactics and Strategies

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CHOOSING INTERNET MARKETING TACTICS FOR A WEBSITE

When running a website or online business, it’s important to choose the best Internet marketing tactics, which will offer the biggest reward in traffic or income compared to the amount of time or money invested. This is called getting a good ROI (return on investment) from your Internet marketing tactics.

There are many common, and general, forms of Internet marketing, and most can work for a wide variety of websites and online businesses through the different Internet marketing tactics available in each. These are some of the basic types of Internet marketing:

1. Email Marketing – email newsletters, coupons and offers, etc.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – link-building, keyword optimization, etc.
3. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – search engine advertising, etc.
4. Viral Marketing – video / file-sharing, tell-a-friend, etc.
5. Affiliate Marketing – having others sell your products for a percentage
6. Online Advertising – banner ads, text link ads, sponsorships, etc.
7. Online PR – online press releases, blogging, etc.

There are a few steps in choosing the best Internet marketing tactics for a website or online business:

1. Choose a niche or industry.
2. Identify the target market.
3. Determine what most influences that target market.
4. Evaluate the competition’s strengths, weaknesses, and their marketing tactics.
5. Create an Internet marketing plan, including a marketing budget.

As a part of creating an Internet marketing plan, list all possible Internet marketing tactics that fit your budget and have the potential to reach your target market. Once you have a master list of potential Internet marketing tactics, run each through the following checklist to narrow down the best options, and create your final list of Internet marketing tactics for your website or online business:

__ Will reach the target market.
__ Will be able to influence the target market.
__ Has been used in this niche or other niche’s targeting a similar market successfully before (better if it’s been used to target a similar market, but never exactly done in the current niche)
__ Will set the website apart from the competition.
__ Will fit within the Internet marketing budget for the site.

What does SEO really do for you?

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SEO is the process of configuring a website so that it has a chance to show up in a search result for a particular keyword phrase. It is your way of telling search engines what you think your site is about. Each search engine has a slightly different formula for how they determine the results of a webpage.

Why is SEO Important?
One word sums it up – competition. As many as 20 billion web pages are being indexed at any given time. To stand out from the crowd, it is absolutely critical to make sure you are using every tool to make sure your customers can find you when they are looking for your products and services.

So why don’t more people do SEO?
SEO is a PROCESS, not a one-time event. It is detail oriented, time consuming and requires regular ongoing efforts in order to maintain results. SEO is one piece of a complete overall online marketing strategy.

Simple guidelines that you can control for best long-term SEO results:

  • Good site structure – The bottom line is that if you can’t easily navigate a site without problems chances are the search engines can’t either and you have no chance of ranking for your key phrase.
  • Good meta-data – Simply geek-speak for the code behind the scenes that search engines use to understand the web page.
  • Good relevant content– Visitors understand that good relevant content is really what they are looking for when they searched with a keyword phrase.  Websites appear higher in the search results generally have regular updates or blogs versus sites with older, stale content on them.

Localize target keywords for better search results

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Ranking with the search engines for local markets, requires a shift in marketing the big three search engines for global traffic. If your service is not global, then do not dilute your SEO efforts from targeted local online markets.

Your #1 goal is to use localized target keywords. Actual localized keywords will bring you a steady stream of natural traffic through local search.

Here are the steps involved for successful optimization in local markets.

1. Localize your target keywords. This includes prefixing or suffixing local terms, names, and names of areas, cities or zip codes with target keywords.

2. Make sure your website is submitted to local search engines, directories and web based yellow pages.

3. Display your mailing address with street address, zip code and complete. Once your site is indexed, these words gain prominence as a part of content.