Internet Marketing Services
The 90-second pitch.
Every site I work on will have varying degrees of success with internet marketing and this is always tied to the amount of work the client has budgeted for, along with the severity of the competition in their area of business. One of my clients, due to the amount of work invested and careful planning have seen a 300% increase in online sales, they have now come to realise the full potential of internet marketing so much so it’s become a fully integrated part of their overall marketing strategy.
There is a word of caution though, there are no guarantees when it comes to internet marketing, no No1 slot on Google sitting there waiting for you to occupy it, no civilised agreement that if you’re lucky enough to find yourself on page one of the search engine results your competitors below you won’t play dirty and try to knock you down a peg or two, or even worse, tactics that were generally seen as playing by the rules have become seen as bad practice and all of a sudden you end up dropping off the search rankings altogether.
What you’ve got to ask yourself is can I afford to risk letting this potential business pass by me and onto my competitors? All the subjects explained below in my view come under the term of Internet Marketing but everyone’s perception of this will differ, at the end of the day it’s all about getting visitors onto your website in the mood to complete your desired goal whether it’s a purchase, newsletter sign-up or something entirely different.
Internet Marketing and SEO
Keyword Research
The first place to start on your road to success, this is where you research the keywords and phrases that you want to be found for, easy you think. Not quite, there’s a lot more to it than just finding the words and phrases you think your customers will use and which ones will bring in the most traffic. For example sometimes regional dialect comes into it, ‘Mobile’ over here in the UK works fine if you’re selling mobile phones but what happens if you’re selling only in the US, the keyword ‘Mobile’ becomes obsolete and you have to look at targeting the keyphrase ‘Cell Phones’. Even when you’ve drawn up a list of keywords and keyphrases you may have to revisit the list once you’ve done your Competitive Analysis.
Competitive Analysis
Once you have your keywords and phrases researched and listed you have to look at what the competitive landscape looks like, some keywords or phrases may be targeted by big companies with very large marketing budgets or maybe sites which have been around for such a long time they’ve built up a high level of trust with the search engines and have also gained 1000’s of inbound links over the years they’ve been operating. If you don’t know your competition you could be doing the equivalent of trying to kill an elephant with a peashooter or even worse, trying to do it in the dark if you’ve not done your keyword research.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
So what does someone in SEO do? It’s all about getting you to rank higher on the search engines using a lot of different tactics which either means making adjustments to your site or server set-up so the search engines can come in and find your information without anything hindering their progress or building links coming into your site from other websites which can boost your rankings depending on where the link is coming in from and how it’s structured. Be warned this is a very simplified explanation of a very complicated subject.
SMO (Social Media Optimisation)
This is where a company will try to raise their profile through a social website used and updated by the general public such as Facebook, Myspace or DIGG (three of the most recognisable to anyone outside the internet bubble, there are hundreds more), SMO could entail a branding exercise, reputation management or linkbaiting exercise. For some websites the competition may be so intense that this may be the most cost effective option to kick-starting your online business or maybe it’s a more efficient tool to reach the right customer demographic.
PPC (Pay Per Click)
In a nutshell you choose a keyword, you then decide how much you want to bid and then depending on how much your competition are bidding on the same keyword and how well you’ve designed your campaign the search engine in question ranks you accordingly in their sponsored search results. I won’t go into the ins and outs of PPC like phrase matching, bidding wars and quality scores as this subject too, can get very involved.
Analytics – Testing – Reporting
How did you do? How do you know if you’re moving forwards or sliding backwards? I come from an engineering/manufacturing background and the whole lean, continuous improvement ethos is integral to any business wanting to succeed, whatever you want to call it, testing and analysis has large part to play. Even if it’s at a very basic level and just monitoring your traffic, having a website does mean a continuous cycle of planning, implementation and reviewing.
Hi I'm Aaron, based in the UK, I work as a web designer / internet marketing manager for a large UK pet housing company. I also carry out freelance work for various clients specialising in small to medium sized businesses.
