search engine placement and optimization / small business web site design

Introduction to Internet Marketing

Do you have a web site that isn’t working for you? Are you trying to build a new web site and wonder how to keep it from getting lost in the billions of web pages out on the Internet? Let me first say something that may surprise you. The strategy for marketing a product, service, or vision on the web has changed dramatically in the last few years.

Unfortunately, many people trying to market their web site haven’t figured it out yet. This means if you know the secrets about this change you have a big advantage over your competitors and can draw lots of traffic to your site. Here’s a basic introduction to that change.

The Old Method

The old method was based on an interesting concept pioneered by Google, was patented by them, and made them lots of money. The idea was based on the fact that a user queries Google on a keyword phrase that is relevant to their needs. The search engine then returns pages based on the strength of the pages relevant to the keyword phrase. Links going into your page from other quality sites were a major asset for positioning your web pages in the returned results. Therefore, the main thing is to get the right keyword phrases that define the problem, phrases that are used frequently in searching the web but had few pages competing in the results. The mantra, from Brent Winters of FirstPlace software, was “target the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain.”

For example, suppose you dropped something of value down the drain. How can you retrieve it without a wrench or plumber? Try searching Google on something down the drain. Remember, searcher searches on the problem, not the solution. The keywords should relate to the problem. You should find: http://www.familyhack.com/2007/08/29/drain-tip/

Web sites were relatively static. They didn’t change too often, and it took awhile for Google to find and index your site. Put the work into getting the right keyword phrases, design your page content around those phrases, and then build those links into your site from other quality sites that relate to your problem.

What Happened?

That old mantra is still important. You better get the right keyword phrases and use a lot of them – and their variation – in your content and links. And the links into your site from other quality sites are still very important. Brent Winters is still right. The above strategy still works. So what’s different?

What’s different is that now the process is much more dynamic, sites are indexed faster, and often are interactive. Google wants sites and web pages that are changing constantly. Blogs and social media pages are indexed quickly and are much more important in the success of your web site than in the past. If a web page isn’t moving, it’s dead – road kill.

Today you have to work those moving social media sites like Linkedin, Facebook, Digg, Twitter and the rest. Did you try the search in the last section? I didn’t find this site from Google – a friend emailed the site’s URL to me. The news about the site was traveling through multiple emails all over the web. This is common now - sites are often found from a buzz that is created. As a result, the concept of marketing has changed radically. You want to create buzz. The magic words now are inbound marketing and viral marketing.

The old concept of outbound marketing is changing to inbound marketing. Outbound marketing essentially means that you launch advertising directed to the prospect. I am assaulted each day with over 2000 outbound marketing attempts. Spam is filtered at my host and on my local system. My phone has caller ID, and often don’t even pick up the phone when it rings. There are newspaper advertisements that assault me, magazine ads that target me, podcasts, and a constant stream of television advertising. I bring up my internet browser and I am mentally blocking out banners, popups, and other tricky stuff that wanders over what you are trying to read. Get in your car and drive down the street and you will see a constant stream of signs, billboards, and other forms of advertising vying for your attention. As a result, outbound marketing is rapidly become ineffective and too costly.

With inbound marketing, the customer chooses to come to you. You research what the customer needs, develop a product to meet that need, and then creating the buzz. To quote Robert Allen, instead of developing a s product or service and looking for a target audience, you look for a hungry target audience and then feed it.

What this means is that for an effective web site, you can’t just delegate the web development and search engine optimization to a developer and then sit back and watch the bucks roll in. Instead, you have to take and active and on-going role in blogging, social networking, and whatever you can do to create the buzz on where the food is and help the fish get there. Sites like Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Digg more become very important parts of your marketing program. Blogs should be an integral part of your web site in many cases.

Another similar concept, viral marketing, also becomes extremely important. Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing through self-replicating processes. It works much like a biological virus.

Also, video becomes more important as a sales tool. Since video does not contain any keywords directly, using video is a challenge to traditional SEO methods. At the same time, using video correctly in your marketing on sites that support video (such as MySpace) or in your blog or social network adds a strong edge to your marketing program.

We can show you how to set up an aggressive marketing program for your site that can help you get that traffic you need. Contact us today!

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