Archive for the ‘SEM’ Category

So what is Internet marketing? Once your website comes into existence you have to spread the word around. Although the best way of getting traffic is by naturally (or organically) appearing high on search engine result pages for keywords and key expressions relevant to your business, it takes a very long time and great effort. You must have an Internet marketing strategy along with carrying out your efforts to optimize your website for various search engines.

The primary components of an Internet marketing plan are:

• PPC (pay-per-click) advertising: In PPC advertising your links are displayed on various search engines and high-traffic websites and you pay for every click they send you. The best example is the Adsense links that you often come across on many websites. Even when you use Google to look for something you see those big boxes on the right-hand side or at the top; they are paid advertisements and if you click those links the advertiser will have to pay Google. Since the links appear at various places, the advertisers can bid for prime locations.

• Link and banner advertising: This is almost same as PPC advertising but in this case you can either pay a monthly amount to the publisher for publishing your link or banner or you can pay for every thousand impressions (an impression is when a page loads and then that page displays your link or banner).
• Publishing articles and distributing them: This is an inexpensive way of spreading your links around the Internet. 100s of 1000s of websites are constantly looking for content to publish and when they use your articles they have no problem attributing them to you along with publishing a link to your website since most probably they are using your articles for free. You can either approach individual publishers or you can submit your articles to various online article distribution services.

• Publishing online press releases: Just like you publish your press releases in newspapers and magazines you can also publish them on online magazines and newspapers. In fact there are many commercial as well as free websites that can publish your press release along with a link to your website.

• Generating highly relevant content for your own website/blog: The more content you have on your website or blog the more reason you give to people and the search engine crawlers to visit your link, and if you update your website or blog on a regular basis you can generate lots of repeat traffic (repeat-traffic is far more valuable than new traffic). Relevant content on your website or blog also encourages other bloggers and website owners to link to you. Besides it also gives more pages to search engines to index and display.

• Encouraging other online publishers to write about your product or service and link to your website: You can always request other online publishers and bloggers to write about your product or service; sometimes they do it for free if they really like what you have to offer and sometimes you need to pay them. Whatever method you follow the basic idea is people writing about you and linking to you.

• E-zine/newsletter publishing: This is definitely one of the oldest forms of Internet marketing. When people voluntarily sign up to receive your emails it means they are really interested in hearing from you and sooner or later they will do business with you.

• Social media marketing: Have you ever wondered why websites like FaceBook, Twitter and YouTube have become such a rage? They allow people to express themselves and exchange ideas and opinions. They can also help you increase your visibility if you can engage in fruitful conversations with the users of these websites.

By now everyone has heard of blogging, twitter, Facebook and other social media technologies.  The question many small businesses have is how does this help me?

If there was one tool or technology I would suggest ever company use it would be blogging.  Blogging is perfect for small businesses that want to reach a wider audience or to take on the big players.  When the Internet was first introduced to business at large the biggest benefit was for those who had limited budgets and limited resources.  Blogging is a perfect tool to help your business reach new customers by giving them insight to who you are and what you can do for them. 

Example of Corporate Blogging for Capital Equipment.

A great example of a Corporate Blog is the website Industrial Machinery News (http://www.industrial-machinery-news.com).  This website showcases industrial machinery utilized in many industries around the world.  Capital equipment sales has taken a big hit with the down-turn in today’s economy.  Many equipment manufactures are looking for new effective ways to drive traffic to their websites.  Industrial Machinery News has done this through targeted articles that enlighten the reader and helps to push them to the customer’s website.

3 Reasons Blogs help small business

What’s the quickest way to improve search engine ranking?

Blogs are search traffic magnets. By writing an article a day, a business can very quickly build up a massive blog archive packed with keyword rich articles! Content is food for the search engine spiders blog archives are an endless source for the spiders. If you feed them well they will in turn reward you with traffic!

Blogs build brand equity and establish you as a market leader.

People read a lot and a lot during the day.  When you blog about your business you continue to state what it is you do, why you do it and why you’re the business to go to. You build your Brand Equity and the view others have of you.  Leadership is easier to do online with a blog then by any other traditional marketing tool.

Blogs give your business a human voice

We all became a little jaded with all the sales and marketing hype over the past decade or so.  Blogs help to knock down those walls and open new doors of communication.  People are becoming engaged, passionate and motivated.

Corporate blogging does not only mean maintaining a blog, but also monitoring the blogosphere. At the rate news travel on the blogosphere, you need to be in at the right place at the right time to address any issues. Monitoring the blogosphere is no longer a choice, in my opinion. If you are not aware of what people are saying about you online, its time to turn your business offline.

 What other benefits are there in corporate blogging? Care to add to this list?