Internet marketing has gone through very dramatic changes over the years. With the multiple updates being released by Google and the platforms popping up every other day. There’s so much to learn about online marketing and make it very effective for your own good. But as a website owner, you must not sit back and watch your site rankings slip. A lot can be done to build a strong online presence.
White hat online marketing techniques
It’s quite unfortunate that most website owners are fascinated by high rankings without taking time to consider the internet marketing techniques that were used to generate them. White hat techniques are those that are done not just to improve your traffic and rankings, but to ensure that your website brings in value and rakes profits for a long time to come. Good examples of white hat techniques include quality link building like guest posting, blogging and social media advertising.
On the other hand, black hat techniques, which are usually referred to as spamming, have the main goal of increasing site rankings without bringing in any value to the business. How does this happen? Well, not all the traffic that your website gets can help your business. If you don’t target the right customers, most people who will be getting to your site will not convert- they’ll just move away immediately after landing on your web pages.
This gives your site a very high bounce rate and makes it harder for you to be recognized as an authority by search engines like Google. The best way to avoid this is by making sure the SEO expert is not taking part in any black hat techniques like duplicate content, spammy blog comments and forum posts.
The 3 main areas of internet marketing
When looking to market your brand online, it’s important to understand the techniques that can work for you and pick them carefully. Understand what goes into every other form of internet marketing before making a decision.
In this article, we have classified 3 forms of internet marketing.
- Search engine optimization
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
Social Media Marketing
How many social media platforms are there today? This is a question that most people can’t answer because the number keeps on going up every other day. This simply shows that people love social platforms and why you should take advantage of them to market your business online. Most businesses have pages on major social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, G+ and Pinterest. But social media marketing is more than just having a business page and posting several items in a day.
In order to succeed in social media marketing, you must be prepared to do the following.
- Understand the social platforms which most of your target customers use to interact and focus on them.
- Develop a social media strategy based on your goals and needs.
- Perform social media activities on a consistent basis
- Take advantage of paid advertising in these social platforms to get more exposure.
- Use social media to interact with your customers and not just for promoting your products or services.
A lot more can be done on social media, but the 5 things mentioned above will help you to get started.
Content Marketing
Internet marketing is also largely dependent on the kind of content you share with your web visitors. Most people assume that content is just the textual element on your website. But in the real sense, content includes images, videos, games and other elements which users gain information from. Low quality content not only undermined the user experience but it also affects your rankings. So as you are drafting any piece of content for your web pages, make sure you avoid the following common mistakes.
Mistakes to avoid in content marketing
- Duplication of content
- Grammar and spelling errors in the text
- Content that is not credible
- Providing information that is irrelevant or outdated
- Poor structure (failing to use short paragraphs, subtitles and bold)
Blogging should be done on a consistent basis and you need to make sure you market your blog posts on different social media platforms. Also invest time in guest blogging because it helps to establish you as an authority or leader in your industry.
Search Engine Optimization
Probably the most important form of internet marketing, because it encompasses all the other aspects mentioned above, is SEO. Website owners now appreciate the value of SEO.
So how did it all start? People started noticing that the websites which had a high ranking for various search terms were the ones getting the most traffic. This is because when a user keys in a certain search term, he/she is likely to click on the sites that appear on the first page of Google SERP. This meant that businesses which had a high ranking online for relevant search terms, got the most customers. Website owners rushed to find ways to improve their rankings and that’s basically how SEO was developed.
SEO involves a variety of activities including:
- Keyword research and analysis
- Content creation and sharing
- On page optimization techniques like making sure the website loads quickly
- Content optimization
- Quality backlinking
But as common as SEO is, most people don’t get the most of it because they fail to understand how search algorithms operate. Some SEO techniques were rendered ineffective after Google Panda and Google Penguin updates. That’s why it’s always important to keep an eye of the changes that are taking place in search engine algorithms.
Which form of internet marketing is best?
You cannot succeed online without taking advantage of all these 3 forms of internet marketing. You’ll need social media to share all the content you’ve created on your site. Making sure the content gets enough exposure will boost your search rankings. So all these internet marketing basics are intertwined. It’s up to you to develop a strategy that incorporates each one of them.
