Internet Marketing

In the old days of the web, you just incorporate a few meta tags in your webpages and then submit it to a few search engines. It’s not that easy anymore.
The web has grown to over 8+ Billion pages, and search engines have had to get much better at catagorizing the internet. This has also made it harder to stand out from the crowd. Here are the basics:

Pay Per Click Advertising

Google Adwords
Adwords has the biggest share of the Pay Per Click (PPC) market. They make it easy to set up an account, and the interface is pretty easy to use. You set up an account with your credit card, and then start by setting up a campaign based upon your keywords. Be forewarned, however, that Adwords can and will rack up huge credit card charges, especially when you start out, and don’t understand how it works.

Yahoo Search Marketing
YSM has a much smaller portion of the PPC market. Their interface is not as easy as Adwords, and it can be confusing at first. On the positive side, though, it’s much easier to understand the concept. The higher the bid, the higher your position on the page. Of course, you want to maximize your ROI, by having high clickthru and conversion rates.

Organic

Search Engines
Most traffic comes from the search engines. Google is the largest search engine, delivering an amazing 63% of all searches(Dec. 08). If you are on the front page-the first 10 listings for a term, then you will get traffic. This is where Search Engine Optimization comes in. Our goal with SEO is to improve your website’s visibility and then rankings.

Links
The second source of organic traffic comes from other websites that have linked to your site. High quality links bring relevant, qualified traffic to your site. This is the type of traffic that converts well. Hint: Cultivate those incoming links. Develop great unique content and wait for those incoming links to develop. Reciprocal link campaigns are also supplemental way to bring traffic to your site. Just make sure the links are high quality, relevant, and within your niche.

Social Networking
Use social networking sites like MySpace and LinkdIn and include a link to your website in your profile and any posts you make. Join some forums related to your web site, and drop your url when it is relevant and appropriate to do so. It might take a year or two, but is it ever worth it. Add your url on Wikepedia, on a relevant page. It must be a great resource, though, if you want it to stay.

Directories

Yahoo Directory
The Yahoo directory cost $299 per year, which makes it the highest priced directory. You’ll have to decided yourself it’s worth the money.

Best of the Web
The Best of the Web directory, at $69.00 per year, has been around for quite a while. It is a good value for the price, when compared to Yahoo.

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