Melih Oztalay
Back in 1994 after you created a website for your business,
marketing was fairly simple. Generally you would make changes to
your HTML code for search engine optimization and for the most
part promoted your website through offline methods. These may
have included business cards, letterhead, print advertising and
other such methods. Whether or not your site was listed on the
only search engine, Yahoo, at the time was purely based on how
well you optimized our web pages. If you did a good job then
multiple pages of your site would be listed consecutively for a
search.
Twelve years later in 2006 the entire perspective of marketing
your site on the web has become a science requiring a degree.
Although, we are all eager to market our website on the web we
are somewhat unclear how to accomplish this task through a maze
of policies set by the Big 3 search engines - Google, MSN and
Yahoo. Most businesses would first seek out professional advice.
In the process of seeking professional Internet Marketing
advice, your story may look something like this.
"By now I had heard about pay-per-click, something called Ad
Sense, link exchanges, banner advertising and it all sounds
quite confusing. After all as a business owner, my forte is to
run my company, not try and figure out how to market a website
on the Internet. As I seek out professional advice I get quite a
variety of different stories. One person calls themselves
Internet marketer and the only thing they provide is
Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns. The next person I speak to
also consider their business to be in Internet Marketing, yet
the only service provided is Search Engine Optimization. Even
that term was somewhat vaguely defined to me. I continue to hear
about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but it seems to vary
from changes to our website to advertising on the web. I am most
definitely puzzled at this point. Can anyone describe what
Internet Marketing is actually about?"
Advertising and Marketing has always been handled by
professional firms that have college educated individuals and
understand the difference between Advertising and Marketing. In
case you are wondering, here are the definitions of Advertising
and Marketing.
- Marketing is the process or technique of promotion, selling
and distributing a product or service.
- Advertising is to make your product or service publicly known;
an announcement to call public attention by emphasizing
qualities to arouse a desire to purchase.
One of the primary issues of advertising and marketing on the
Internet is that you may not necessarily reach someone educated
in the field of advertising and marketing. Instead it is someone
that has educated themselves about a particular area of Internet
Marketing. For instance they may have specialized in Affiliate
Marketing or Pay-Per-Click campaigns while another individual
may know more about making changes to your website for search
engine optimization. Currently these types of services are
fragmented and they do require someone with the appropriate
skills to manage an entire Internet marketing campaign.
If we take a look at all the different areas of Internet
marketing you will find the following in your list:
Research, Analysis, Planning and Strategy We need to research
key phrases and look at the data to determine our title and
description.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) I believe it is safe to say
that SEO is not advertising on the web. SEO is strictly
modifications to your HTML code and website. Making sure your
website is HTML validated, density checks, the keywords,
phrases, content, alt descriptions, anchor titles and so on are
in place for the entire website.
Internet Marketing This is the actual process of promotion as
the definition of marketing was described earlier. Some would
call this Natural Propagation Marketing, others will call it
Organic marketing. With this form of marketing you can rest
assured the shelf life of the efforts put forth can be measured
in years.
Internet Advertising Although, the shelf life of Internet
advertising can be measured in seconds and can hemorrhage a
business financially, there are three areas of Internet
advertising. The first would be to utilize an Internet
Advertising Network (IAN) to submit a variety of banners through
out a variety of websites in order to narrow your advertising to
an area with the most response. Another area is Pay-Per-Click
(PPC) campaigns such as Google Ad Sense or Yahoo Search
Marketing. Lastly, you may consider direct advertising on
websites that you have found to be of value to your business
with high page ranking.
Management & Reporting It is necessary to monitor all the
various activities you are pursuing on the web. Internet
marketing gives us the ability to measure almost all aspects of
our advertising and marketing campaigns with the push of a
button. You will want to keep an eye on your website statistics,
check your Google page rank, your Alexa traffic ranking, and
your link popularity overall to name a few.
If we consider all the various parts that are required for
proper business Internet marketing, you will find the industry
moving towards consolidation in the future. Equally, we will
find that advertising and marketing on the web will eventually
fall back to educated professionals who not only understand
advertising and marketing, but will now include their education
in Internet marketing as well.
About the author:
Melih Oztalay is the CEO of SmartFinds Internet Marketing.
Internet marketing is not only about knowledge and experience,
but also about imagination. Visit SmartFinds Internet Marketing.
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