Dwight M. Scott

Having a well thought out and properly executed web marketing plan can make a small and relatively unknown web site turn into a large and successful one. One of the multiple benefits of using search engine marketing is that you can directly track improvements in web site traffic and keyword effectiveness through free web analytics such as Google Analytics or similar programs.

Due to the fact that these services are free, simply hiring a search engine marketing firm to improve upon your site or help you build a new one is the only investment which needs to be made in order to market a web site. Because the internet allows consumers to comparison shop and purchase products 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, this investment is much wiser than spending it on traditional advertising. If an advertising budget is invested in a one time, short term, or long term advertisement campaign the effects will be lost immediately after the advertisement stops running. This means that either you will have to continually provide a substantial advertising budget each month, or invest in a one time optimization of your web site.

The optimization of your site through a web marketing plan ensures that not only will you begin to receive targeted traffic directly to your company’s web site, but that the search engine marketing will never have an end date. The information which you put out on the web stays up until it is deleted, and in most cases with search-engine marketing, all efforts made to market your product or services will remain online for years to come. This results in residual monthly effects of a search engine marketing campaign, even if it was executed years ago.

On the other hand, many advertisers spend money using pay per click and pay per impression advertising. In the long term scheme of your business, there is almost no value in this form of advertisement other than improving brand recognition. And although in some cases using pay per click advertising can lead to a greater brand recognition over time, the same effect will be clearly evident after properly using search engine marketing. The only difference between the two benefits is that the efforts made with a web marketing plan will still be online in the future in order to help improve and maintain your search engine rankings with Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

To maximize the benefits of search-engine marketing, the web site in question needs to be designed in an eye catching manner. Not only should a great web site be nice to look at, but it also needs to be easily navigated for the average person. Making sure all information is clear, up to date, and easily found from the main page will ensure that your search engine optimization will not go to waste. The rapid growth of the internet and the popularity of faster internet connections makes it possible to reach billions of people around the world. By optimizing your web site, content, and keywords with a search engine optimization firm, you can be sure that you will reach more of these internet savvy consumers.

Search engine marketing consultants are able to devise the most effective web marketing plan for your business. Investing in web marketing is useful because the content which ranks your page higher on search engines never goes away.

Author: Carlotta Jones
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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The challenges of business competition and the hard survival conditions in the Internet jungle, make lots of business owners hire professional web marketing services. Online reputation, the return of customers, solid profit and good future prospects represent the main objectives any web developer considers when starting to work online. The value of quality marketing services is obvious in the more complex tasks rather than in the basic ones. If we consider traffic improvement and the increase of sales, the average web marketing services would include website design, web analytics, usability evaluation, SEO (search engine optimization), advertising, statistics and monitoring.

Web page ranking and functionality normally increase following the applications of online marketing services. Moreover, the implementation of various advertising models will also require professional assistance, and the including pay per click advertising service would be of great help for many web investors. Last but not least, by means of quality web marketing services you can develop a very good online reputation and the possibility to extend your business by using web visitor behavior analysis. There are many companies that provide free evaluation of a company’s web performance as a support for the possible web marketing services necessary.

Branding and sales strategies rely on the extended use of online marketing services. The proof that this is a successful formula is that corporations organize real web marketing departments to create the premises for development on the electronic market. SEM or search engine marketing therefore plays the most important role of all online web marketing services no matter who provides them. The business evolution and specificity may thus accelerate given the assistance and consultancy options. The need for web marketing services becomes desperate when a general decline if not fall is registered in business evolution.

If you invest in online marketing solutions when you are first planning strategies and business development online, you’ll reduce the risk of negative evolution and financial loss. A whole range of vital tasks would be carried out professionally, such as web design, that are more difficult to correct when they are ready in the final format. Moreover, you can save money by relying on techniques, methods and concepts that have been validated and verified by extensive experience in a domain. Therefore, trustworthy services could set the course for good business.

Patrick is a passionate believer in the power of technology to better the lives of everyone and his passion and drive are hallmarks of his attitude to doing business.

Find out more about various online web marketing tips and cheap ways to market your website.

Author: Patrick Sia
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Web 2.0 and Web marketing is a match made in heaven. There are many ways to create traffic to your website using the power of Web 2.0. Below I am going to examine what I consider to be the top five.

Jack Humphrey, a well-known Web 2.0 expert, defines it this way in his Authority Black
Book:

Generally speaking, if people can submit links to content, submit content, make comments and vote good/bad content up/down thus affecting the amount of traffic that content can generate, it’s Web 2.0.

Blogs, wikis, file sharing sites, content rating systems, book-marking sites, and social networking sites are all examples of Web 2.0. Some of the more well-known Web 2.0 sites are YouTube (file sharing), Facebook and MySpace (social networking), Wikipedia (wiki), BlinkList (book-marking) and Digg (content rating system). The list is almost endless, and the traffic that these websites generate is absolutely staggering.

So how can you harness some of this traffic?

1) Create original, quality and compelling content and submit them to Web 2.0 websites.
For example, if you write an original and compelling article, you can submit it to content sharing and content rating system websites such as Digg, Propeller, Newsvine MarkTD or Reddit. Sometimes there content sharing and content rating system websites that specializes in a particular industry. MarkTD specializes in marketing, for example.

When you submit your article to these sites, people will give it a vote, and each vote moves the article up where it can be seen by more and more people. This has the potential of creating a lot of traffic for your website since each reader will need to click on the link to go to your site to read the full article. And you’re building a permanent link pointing to your website that can be followed for months and years to come. (And don’t forget, a link from a quality site to your website helps in your search engine rankings too.)

Or you can create an original video and submit it to YouTube. Here it will get rated and possibly seen by many people. If the video contains your website or a plug for your business, then all the better. YouTube is not the only video sharing website however. There are many, and one video can be submitted to them all. This same concept applies to your original images, photographs, digital art and audio files.

2) Web 2.0-ize other people’s sites that contain a link back to your website
I’ll assume you already know how your bookmarks (or Favorites) work in your browser. There are websites that exist that act in the same way, but the bookmarks you set are public. BlinkList and Simpy are two examples of this. People’s public bookmarks are browsed by others and lead to clicks to the sites you’ve bookmarked. So be sure to bookmark your business website and inner pages that are important.

Also, these bookmarks can appear in search results in engines like Google and Yahoo. And some even think that search engines use book-marking sites in their algorithms, although this has not been conclusively proven. Simpy and BlinkList are two more examples of these kinds of Web 2.0 book-marking sites.

Let’s say you write an original, quality article and post it to your business website. Then let’s say you submit the article to a handful of content rating websites like some of the ones explained above. To further market this article, you can then use social book-marking sites to bookmark the page on the content rating websites that list your new article and that contain a link back to your article. This can be very powerful.

Or let’s say you notice that an authority in your industry has a link on its website that points back to your website. Go ahead and bookmark the page on the authority site, thus marketing it, which in turn markets your site as well. One particular Web 2.0 website that is very popular and can generate tons of traffic is StumbleUpon. This site allows people to give any page you deem worthy a “thumbs-up”. And if you get enough “thumbs-up”, people browsing StumbleUpon will see it and click over to that page. So I always make it a point to “Stumble” my business websites’ homepages and sites that contain links to my business websites as well.

If you become an active member in a handful of Web 2.0 websites and utilize these first two suggestions alone, you will be amazed at the kind of traffic you can generate.

3) Engage in the conversations and activities
When I suggest above to become an active member I mean that you need to visit a few of your favorite Web 2.0 sites on a regular basis and actually contribute to the site with your opinions, votes, comments and submissions. For instance, if you like Digg or Newsvine, visit them often and submit quality articles, content and sites to them. And they don’t all have to be your sites.

In fact, the more impartial you are, the more people will trust you when you submit one of your articles. And you ought to vote for other people’s Digg submissions as well. You may enjoy Facebook, Linkedin ro MySpace. First, create a profile on the site, then go out and make connections within the community. The more you do this, the more you can harness the power of the people you meet to help market your website or yourself.

Visit and comment on blogs in your industry. This is another tried and true way to engage in the online conversation. Blogs are Web 2.0 and have been around for a while now. Unfortunately, leaving blog comments has been abused by so many people that you absolutely must only leave blog comments that contribute to the overall blog post.

Only add your website’s link if you’re asked to. These links won’t help your search engine rankings but can drive traffic to your site.

4) Encourage visitors to bookmark and tag your content
If you have a blog, add a feature that shows up at the end of every post that allows users to bookmark or submit your post to other Web 2.0 websites. ‘Share This’ is just such a blog add-on (or plug-in) that can do this for you. If you have a Wordpress blog you’ll be able to find a plug-in that allows you to integrate this type of feature (including Share This) into your blog very easily and without the need for any technical knowledge. If you write a memorable or compelling post, people can use this to make bookmarks to the post, Stumble it, Digg it and so forth. All of this can lead to more traffic.

5) Add a Web 2.0 feature to your website
First of all, your business website needs a blog. If you don’t have one, then stop reading this and go to it. A blog enables you and your employees an easy way to post new information that is relevant to your business and helpful to your customers. And it allows your customers to easily communicate with you by leaving comments.

But beyond a blog, what other Web 2.0 features can you add to your website? If you’re selling products, consider adding in a feature that allows customers to rate each product. It can be something as simple as one to five stars or more elaborate where they leave reviews. Amazon does this and it one of the major driving forces in their sales. When potential customers see that your products are rated by existing customers, they’ll be more likely to trust you and buy.

You could add a wiki to your website. A wiki is software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content. By encouraging your website visitors to create content for you, you’re allowing your site to grow, become more informative and thus creating more chances to be found in search engines. These features can be found as third-party software packages and integrated into your existing website surprisingly easily.

The power of Web 2.0 is substantial. It’s time you begin to harness its potential and by following these five suggestions, you’ll be well on your way.

Jason O’Connor is the owner of The Net Gazette (http://www.thenetgazette.net/), a free newsletter that teaches Web professionals all about Web design, development and Web marketing.

Author: Jason OConnor
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Doing business on the web requires intensive communication. Communication with different peoples on the web requires great effort on your part. The blog is now the universal door to instantly connecting yourself with others, be your reasons personal or business. Take note that the social media complements the blog in providing you with numerous opportunities by which you are able to turn your strategies into real marketing possibilities.

The social web media provides the golden chance of building the ever so important relationship factor that every online marketer needs in order to succeed in his or her business. If you give good content in your blog and if your product or service is what the customers need at that point in time, your business will be in for a boom.

If you want to achieve social web marketing success, there are certain things you will need to do:

(1) Welcome people to your blog

You have to extend a very warm welcome to your visitors to your blog, read and view it. Often visitors with similar interests will be thrilled to what you have published. Their opinions and views should preferably be taken seriously on your part. It will do your business a world of good, as they can contribute to your strategy to revamp your business if need be. Usually, the targeted audience will come along, and they will receive value from your posts. Form a community and welcome them to join; your marketing strategies will produce result as the community grows, and as relationship becomes stronger by the days.

(2) Be aware of various opportunities from the social web

What is your understanding of the social web? How can it contribute to your marketing strategies? These are important areas that you will need to acquire complete understanding even before thinking of using it. The social web gives you the golden opportunity of interactive communication. Through sincere and friendly interaction, you can expect to get only good and positive results, as you start to develop a relationship in the process. You will have to know what differing communities out there are offering in terms of content, topics, and how large have they grown to be, what level of interactivity is being currently engaged , and what knowledge can be sieved from such conversations to help you fine-tune your own marketing strategies.

(3) Decide on how to propel your plan

This concerns the choice of the right platform to kick off your plans. You will have to make the best decision as this will affect the outcomes for each platform you have chosen. To achieve social web marketing success, there are numerous conduit strategies that you can use. These include social networking, online communities, reputation aggregators, and of course, blogs. Take note that every platform gives different results, as each is a specialist in its own right. A little homework on your part goes a long way in correctly guiding the direction of your social web marketing strategy.

(4) Write well and give good information

Visitors come to your site to read what you have in store for them. Your content has to be updated, informative, relevant, and perhaps educational too. Content must not be monotonous. It must be written with your voice if you are using your blog. Great content scores well in the eyes of Google too. Visitors will feel worthwhile joining the right community that provides fresh and updated content. Content that is pleasing to read will often keep visitors engaged and interested for more.

(5) Perform optimization on your site

You will need to optimize your site firstly for the sake of the spiders from major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN, and secondly, for the sake of making it more friendly to your community of friends that you have gathered along the way. Try to optimize for the No 1 spot on Google - you will be getting increased visibility and more traffic! Make your site navigation simple and easy. Be proactive, that is to say, be on the lookout for new innovations that can help you beat off competition. Don’t you agree that new features and new tools on your site will help make your site appear more refreshing, appealing, and fun to step into?

(6) Be in control of performance

In any marketing strategy, you will need to monitor performance. It is not different for social web marketing either. You will need to understand the pulse of your community. Which direction is it going now? How can you best improve customer relationships? As far as your product brand is concerned, what plans do you have to strengthen it? You will need to apply metrics that you think will help you monitor performance. Change your strategies if necessary to improve areas where certain platforms are not performing.

(7) Carry out active promotional plans

You have to actively promote even on the social web. There are no two ways about it. Promotion is integral to the principles of marketing. What can be done here is for you to actively participate in forums, posting your comments on the blogs or sites of others, and perhaps getting yourself involved in guest blogging. There are great opportunities for you to interact on social bookmarking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, just to name a few. You can join LinkedIn where there is professional networking. You can also submit your lens to Squidoo covering your favorite topics. Importantly, do not forget to indicate your URL when you are submitting to these bookmarking sites. You will get increased visibility for your blog or site.

In conclusion, you can make your presence felt on the social web. It is one place for great interactivity and fun. Even if you are marketing your product or service, it does not really matter. Just be interactive and responsive. Be nice. Be yourself. This is the golden path to harnessing your social web marketing success.

For latest updates on how to increase traffic, raise page ranking, write effective articles and powerful squeeze pages, create explosive blog marketing system, learn about viral marketing, and bring in massive income from your internet marketing business, please Click here

Webmaster: Jeremy Long Chia Teik.

Author: Jeremy Long Chia Teik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Internet web marketing is the latest marketing tool and it is of many types. Web advertising, MLM (Multi level marketing), email advertising, affiliate marketing, contextual advertising, in-text advertising, newsletter marketing, PPC (pay per click) advertising, and viral marketing are some of the common Internet web marketing tools. The major advantage of these Internet based web-marketing tools is that these are low cost and have global approach. You need to spend only a fraction of the advertising cost and you reach millions of people across the globe. However, the main disadvantage of Internet web marketing is the Internet security and it is still the major hurdle.

Spider web marketing system is the new Internet web-marketing tool and it has many advantages over other conventional advertising approaches. We have seen many MLM techniques; however the new spider web marketing approach is far better than multi level marketing approaches. In multi level marketing, you need to make your down line to make some profit and which quite cumbersome for a beginner like me.

If we talk about spider web, many people find it easy as the work is done by someone else on their behalf and therefore they get a ready made website having regular contents added to the site and they just need to use their social contacts for getting leads and profit from it.

Actually if you want to sell any product, your marketing through spider web will bring you number of leads and at the same time will provide multiple stream of incomes. Once you become the member of spider web you get free training so that you succeed in your future Internet based web marketing. You can make your own list of people having similar interest and your contacts at social networking sites will also help you in building your referrals and you will get regular residual income from your referrals.

So, spider web is the latest internet based web marketing tool, where you spin your contacts at World Wide Web and get lots of leads and referrals in just five to ten minutes of job a day. You can start earning from multiple stream of income and your chances of success are far better than multi level marketing.

Author: Ashish K Arora
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Programmable Multi-cooker

SEO and You

So you have a small business and you want to increase visitors to your website. You hear all this talk about SEO and you’re wondering, “what should this mean to me?” Actually, it should mean quite a bit. You would be surprised at how many business owners still ignore this gold mine-this funny new thing called The Web.

Search Engine Optimization also known as SEO begins from the ground up. If you were building a highway, you would survey and design first before pouring the concrete. Ideally you want to start thinking about search engine optimization from the time you begin designing your site and writing the content. But if you already have site, it’s not too late dig in–to rebuild a savvy foundation. In brief, Search Engine Optimization involves two main steps: (1) modifying your sites’ meta tags, title tag, and keyword density, and (2) initiating strategies to gain link popularity, a quality search engine ranking, and sustained web traffic.

As a small business owner, you are undoubtedly very knowledgeable and passionate about your niche, but more than likely you are not up to speed or maybe even skeptical when it comes to web marketing. This is okay. This is normal. And it’s okay if you can’t afford a marketing firm. However you will need to become your own guru and I’m here to tell you that you can do it.

Case Studies

Client A once spent $7,000 on a gorgeous website launching their goods to the country and then when the design was complete, they cut off all marketing funds to save money. Five months later they wanted to know how to increase business and interest in their company. They never even issued a press release launching their new brands, nor pursued a linking program, and consequently had no web traffic at all. Can you imagine building up Las Vegas and then deciding not to let anyone know about it? It’s more common than you think. If this company had just issued a handful of online press releases, written a few articles, invested a few hundred dollars in a sweepstakes, and bought some quality links, their website would have a healthy online presence.

Client B launched a new business in a highly lucrative field and invested just $800 to get to the top of both MSN and Yahoo! as well as gain a respectable ranking on Google for their most important keyword phrase in local searches. Guess what? Client B had new clients and healthy traffic in 4 weeks.

Client C invested $1200 in 2006 to increase their online presence. They achieved close to $70,000 in new business just from people finding their website on local searches. No cold calls, no email solicitations–the website did the work for them. Considering the size of their business, this was a huge breakthrough.

Take Ownership of Keywords

Start-ups and small businesses need to focus on owning their keywords, the keywords that describe the company’s primary offerings online. When the consumer types in that set of keywords, the website that has done the best job at promoting those keywords comes up higher in the search results. You want that to be you. Say to yourself right now: “I will own the web for my keywords.” This is your new mantra. Now start naming your keywords. Who are you? Who do you want to find your business? Congratulations, you now have a marketing mission plan. Don’t say to yourself, “I don’t have time for the marketing plan.” Just make as much time as you can, even a few hours on a weekend will make a huge difference after a few months. Below is a list of Top Twelve Web Marketing Subjects that you will need to learn about. There is ample information about each available for free on the web:

1. Put your researched keywords in your title and on your web page (but don’t spam your own site).
2. Properly format your meta-tags.
3. Develop quality relevant web content.
4. Make sure your navigation and internal linking is easy and organized.
5. Pursue inbound links–only have high quality sites linking back to you (avoid link farms).
6. Get listed in quality global business directories.
7. If applicable, get listed in local business directories.
8. Check out XML site maps. There are free XML sitemap generators on the web.
9. Issue press releases online. Some are free some are for a fee.
10. Use Pay-Per-Click to your advantage even with a tiny budget.
11. Offer a promotion, sweepstakes, or free service on your site.
12. Make sure your URL is visible on all your print material.

Cautions

Caution A: Beware the web page that boasts about achieving huge internet success and makes you scroll down and down further through testimonials and then you find that they are selling an ebook. It’s a brilliant stock marketing technique to lure you in–just don’t bite on the bait. I’ve downloaded a few of these ebooks as a public service and I’ve never read a single word that wasn’t available for free somewhere else on the web. All of us in SEO owe thanks to the numerous true gurus and students of the web for posting their knowledge for free. You just have to look and give yourself time to look–the information you need is out there.

Caution B: Beware the websites that boast that they will get you top listing in the major search engines in 24 hours. Anyone knowledgeable about achieving quality rankings will tell you that it takes time and if you read carefully some of these website are merely offering to open Pay-Per-Click accounts for you. I once heard a super guru say something like, if you want to achieve a lot of web sales at Christmas, start your marketing in September.

Take Heart

With persistence and a little passion you will achieve ownership of your keywords.

Matthew Grant has over a decade of marketing and advertising experience both on Madison Avenue and Main Street. Matthew has been an SEO consultant at large since 2003 and is currently the head of marketing for the newly launched Design and Marketing Directory, TomResults.com [http://www.tomresults.com]

Author: Matthew Grant
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Web marketing is selling and advertising products or services online. The internet provides a venue for low priced goods and services and it provides the fastest means of communication making online business a success for every entrepreneur. Still, it needs constant update and good advertising to invite customers.

Web marketing includes the technical aspects online. These are web design, web sale, web development, etc. these are all very important factors to remember in building online marketing.

For beginners, especially those who have no background in online marketing and technicalities, web marketing is never an easy task. There are thousands of information that need to be learned for one to be able to handle the pressure and control the online business. Before jumping on the technical aspects of web marketing, the basics must be learned down to the simplest terms involved in internet marketing. These are necessary to learn to be able to start understanding the internet language and gather information online.

To start, the following basic terms in web marketing are listed below:

Ad space - It is the location or space available on a page of a site for advertisements.

Frames - a structure that allows the subdivision of a browser window into two or more independent parts to separate for a webpage.

Bookmark - a remembered address (URL) stored in a Web browser that allows the user to go directly to that given site in the future.

Home page - Is the main page or opening of a web site to provide information about the site and its owner.

JavaScript - is an object oriented programming language developed by Netscape Corporation and used to create interactive Web sites.

Navigation - a skill applied to website that which facilitates movement of users from one Web page to another.

Shopping cart - Software used in making a product catalogue available for online customers to view, add/delete, and purchase merchandise.

Web browser - Is a software program that allows searching or browsing various kinds of information on the web.

Web design - The layout and structure of Web page presented in such a way that content and components are coordinated.

Before rushing on the goal of starting internet marketing, one must learn the basics especially those who are beginners and those who are unfamiliar with the complex terms that can be found on the web. This will help the building of a web page that will effectively attract consumers and therefore enhance the success of web marketing.

John Ranquist is a network marketer who likes to help many network marketers by teaching the use of more relevant, up-to-date strategies that are more in-line with today’s day and age of the internet and technology. To know more about John Ranquist, visit his website at http://www.johnranquist.net.

Author: John S Ranquist
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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If you’re searching for a web marketing company to help you grow your online presence and increase profits, these are the criteria you should look for (at a minimum).

Search Engine Optimization

When interviewing Austin web marketing companies, be sure to ask what kind of search engine optimization talent they have in-house. This is critical. Because after all, even if you have excellent lead-generation tools on your site, it won’t matter if nobody can find your website.

Lead Generation Strategies

Things like search engine optimization, pay-per-click and online PR can get people to your website. But what do you do with them once they’re on your site? How do you convert your traffic into sales? These are lead generation questions, and your web marketing company should be able to answer them without hesitation. They should understand how to get your web visitors to respond in some way. Otherwise, your traffic will never amount to sales.

Blogging Support

Business blogs are all the rage right now. There are many reasons for this. Blogs give publishing power to even the most unskilled of web novices. If you can type and send an email, you can publish content to a blog. For these reasons and more, ask your web marketing company if they can set you up with a blog and train you on how to use it.

Website Usability

Who’s going to be updating and managing your website, you or the web marketing firm? This is an important question to ask before selecting a web marketing company. Here’s why. Some website marketing companies build sites that only a programmer can manage. Such a website can not be updated by the average Joe or Jane — it will take the programmer’s assistance. So each time you want to update your website, you’ll have to pay the web marketing company to do it for you.

If you ask me, this kind of approach is outdated. With the abundance of content-management tools available today, there’s no reason you can’t have an easy-to-manage website. For example, when I build websites for clients, I often use WordPress. This blog program can be configured in such a way that it serves as both a blog and a website. Best of all, the website owner can add content and make updates … without any programming skills to speak of. If this kind of usability is important to you (and it should be), ask your web designer or web marketing company about it. If they tell you they don’t offer anything like that, you may want to keep shopping around.

Web Marketing Success Stories

Any web marketing company should be able to share some success stories with you. Even if they’ve only been in business a short while, they should have some case studies to share. If they don’t, you can consider yourself their guinea pig. Are you comfortable with that role?

Conclusion

These are just a few of the things you should look for in a web marketing company. These are the criteria I feel are most important, but you can probably add to my list with your own criteria. By all means do so!

* You may republish this article online if you retain the author’s byline and the active hyperlinks below. Copyright 2007, Brandon Cornett.

About the Author

Brandon Cornett provides Austin web marketing services, SEO training and more. Visit the author’s popular SEO blog at http://www.austinseoguy.com/seo-tips

Author: Brandon Cornett
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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One of the most critical aspects of running a business is marketing. It encompasses every customer related task from creating awareness to customer satisfaction and retention. One may go as far as to say that a business cannot survive or even start up without it. In the current scenario, marketing has become a complex and sophisticated function, especially now that an increasing number of businesses choose to start up online. Now, along with the traditional offline marketing tools, there are a number of web marketing tools and methods available. These web marketing methods must be mastered for any level of success in online business.

The differences that separate web marketing from offline marketing are as below:

o Snail mail vs. email - Email marketing is low cost, efficient, instant and effective means of generating customers. Snail mail is slow, generally more expensive and is losing some of its efficacy with the influx of TV and Internet.

o Limited radius of impact vs. unlimited - The target audience is global in the case of web marketing with the Internet shrinking the world. The radius of offline marketing is limited by physical, political and time barriers.

o Web customers are looking for a product or service similar to yours - The beauty of being an online business is that people log on to look for a service or product that you can offer. Whereas, offline businesses have to rely more on push marketing than the pull effect.

o Long, complex process of making a sale vs. instant conversion - A few clicks of a mouse and the product is sold, in the case of web marketing. Offline marketing process is time and manpower heavy, from generating leads to making a sale.

o Fixed office hours vs. 24 hour store - An online business can sell its products 24 hours a day while an offline business will open and shut at particular hours.

o Advertising in print, TV and radio is expensive - While you can easily offer content, audio and video clips on the Internet for a very low cost.

o Pay for time spots vs. unlimited time and space - Ads in offline marketing mediums are for a limited time only and you pay for time slots and space. In an online marketing scenario, you would keep your ads up for a longer time and pay much less.

o Cost per incremental customer - This cost is very low for web marketing based concerns, whereas this cost is appreciable in case of offline marketing efforts.

o Targeted approach vs. blanket approach - The above reason leads offline marketing businesses to target and select carefully, eliminating a lot of potential customers, who may buy in the future if not the present. However, low incremental costs result in online businesses covering a broad spectrum of the market.

o Segmentation - Preferences are much easier to track for an online business and this means that segmentation is simpler. The web marketing effort has the information it needs to customize its pitch at once.

o Customer contact - Access to customer information is automatic in the case of online businesses and the web marketing process is simplified and made efficient. Databases and mailing lists are created in an instant. On the contrary, offline marketing efforts for the same require time, employees and money.

There are many benefits to both web marketing and offline marketing, and it is best to use a judicious mix of the two.

William King is the director of Wholesale Drop Shippers & UK Wholesalers Directory, UK Wholesalers Suppliers & Drop Shipping Trade Directory, and Worldwide Drop Shippers & Wholesale Drop Shipping Products Directory. He has 18 years of experience in the marketing and trading industries and has been helping retailers and startups with their product sourcing, promotion, marketing and supply chain requirements.

Author: William King
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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What is web-marketing? Why does your business need it?

The best web site and the best web-marketing strategy will not reap the highest possible results, if they are not tightly integrated. Not only do you need a well-designed web site with relevant content and user-friendly navigation, but your site needs to be found by your target audience (prospect customers).

A well-thought web marketing strategy drives traffic to your site through search engines, and other methods. Search engine strategy helps in getting the highest visibility in the search engine ranking, then helps pull the visitors to your web site if your listing is relevant to their initial query. After that, your web site or web page needs to communicate and be relevant in a targeted fashion to what your visitors had in mind when they clicked on your listing or search result.

How does a web site communicate relevancy and targeting? Here are 7 habits a well-thought web-marketing plan needs to include to increase its efficiency.

Habit #1: Keyword strategy

Keyword research must be done to find out what people are actually typing into the search engines.

Of course, it will be important to analyze the competition and your current keywords on an ongoing-basis.

The really important number is the amount of traffic each keyword generates.

Since search engine algorithms and methods are bound to change and are diverse, it is important to revisit your keyword strategy on a regular basis.

Habit #2: Targeted pages to channels or main audience constituencies

The key is to know your audience and address what they are looking for, rather than presenting what your business can offer.

Rather than sending all visitors to your home page and then letting them wander through your web pages, hoping that they will find what they were initially looking for, why not point them in the correct direction and offer them the content they were initially looking for by doing this search query?

Habit #3: Integrating keyword strategy and web content

Also, it is important to point out that keywords need to be re-used in the content itself of the page, and this is done by striking a careful balance between selling to prospect customers, optimizing for search engines, and making the text interesting and useful to your visitors.

Because search engines want repeat customers, they try to return relevant results, so this content cannot be artificially crafted for the purpose of search engine ranking only ; but rather, one must take into consideration the importance of contextual relevancy and content usability.

Habit #4: A call to action

The web page needs to have a call to action, and you need to have some ROI measurement in place to establish the success of your search engine marketing strategy (whether it is paid or unpaid search engine keywords).

Habit #5: Content creation and freshness

Your site needs to grow its content to increase its search marketability, relevancy and ranking.

Indeed, the more fresh content your site has, the more likely it will come up in search results, and the more your audience will come back to your web site.

Habit #6: Integrating your online and offline marketing campaigns

Think about ways of reinforcing the conversion of new prospective leads to consumers.

This can be done through reminders via emails, brochures, coupons, seminars, newsletters, etc.

Habit #7: Link Campaign

You need to get relevant sites to link to your web site.
Partner with sites that have good relevant content related to your business and that are the authority or are popular in your field.

These 7 habits will help in increasing the success of your online presence.
It is important to ensure you have the right resources committed to your web site and allocate the appropriate budget to maintaining and promoting it.

Don’t just build your web site and wait!

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©Valerie Prigent, Speron Inc, MyPrivateCoach d/b/a 2004. http://www.MyPrivateCoach.com

[http://www.MyPrivateCoach.com ] Valerie Prigent is the Web Marketing Coach at MyPrivateCoach. She can be contacted at info@myprivatecoach.com. Get a taste of coaching FREE today, schedule your first free session! This article may be published without the consent of the author so long as the publisher’s box is included in the post.

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Author: Valerie Prigent
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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