Online Marketing Strategies 101
TechnologyThere are two main ways to advertise online, one is using paid advertising programs and the other is using free advertising platforms. The idea is to send targeted internet traffic to an offer to get responses and feedback from interested prospects.
paid advertising
Paid advertising can come in different forms, but the most popular ones are called: SEM (Search Engine Marketing) using PPC (Pay Per Click), Display Advertising, Shopping Networks, Video Advertising using Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Yahoo Ads, just to name a few. The idea behind PPC is simple, networks only charge advertisers when their paid ads are clicked and leads are directed to web pages or landing page offers. Depending on the type of industry or niche and ad networks, PPC prices can vary widely, from 0.50 cents to $60.00 or more, each time a potential customer clicks on an active ad.
In general, insurance, loans, mortgages and legal services are among the highest costs per click. Obviously the most expensive ad network is Google.com with its AdWords program. It is a powerful money making machine if used correctly. It could also leave you broke if you don’t understand the platform correctly. As long as you have the budget and the knowledge, you can really make a difference to your overall conversion and ROI (return on investment).
There are other popular methods of paid advertising that social networks use and their paid advertising programs again use PPC (pay per click) technologies. Networks like: Facebook have a huge and powerful paid advertising program called Facebook Ads with the option to also use Instagram Ads since they also own that social network. You can also buy paid traffic with Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube Ads (AdWords program). On top of that, there are other paid social media advertising platforms like Snap Chat and Pinterest that are also gaining ground.
The advantage of using paid advertising is fast entry. Paid traffic is offered almost immediately once your ad campaigns are finished and officially approved by the network. The downside is that you need a good marketing budget to collect important data, test it, and adjust it to get satisfactory results.
free publicity
First, let’s clear something up about free traffic and web page ranking on the search engine results page, also known as the acronym (SERP). Google and other search engines rank web pages and not websites. You may have one web page of your website appearing on the first page of Google for a particular keyword query, while other pages of the same website are nowhere to be found on the search results pages for the same keyword query.
Google and other search engines will prioritize their respective first page results based on their algorithm (mathematical equation) which contains many ranking factors. The six most important ranking factors are as follows:
1- Page optimization, the action of making a web page search engine friendly and also human (meta tags, keyword selection, interlinking, etc.)
2- Great relevant content
3- Back links (relevant links from other high authority sites pointing to your web pages)
4- UX website design (easy to navigate for a good user experience)
5- Page load speed (the time it takes to load a web page)
6- Responsive design (each page must be compatible with mobile devices)
So, the job of a webmaster is to prepare each page of the website using the best practices of the search engine industry standards. In return, search engines will provide the best possible match to users searching for a particular topic. Google strives to always provide the best user experience and sets the bar high for webmasters to provide the “Wow” factor every time a user lands on a web page after a search engine query.
How to build back links?
As mentioned above, a backlink is created when an external website links to your own website. There are many ways to create back links and get free traffic on the Internet. The most common way is to post articles on social networking sites with a link to your website to get some posting engagements. Also, submitting content articles to well-known article directories will also allow you to get good website visitors for your money pages. Among many good article directories, at the top of the list is EzineArticles.com which really helps SEO organic search result ranking with strong backlinks due to its long online presence. The directory is also considered an authority site in the eyes of Google and other search engines.
Another popular way is to create and submit interesting videos to YouTube and other popular video sites. Another method of getting good quality free traffic to a website is to use directory submissions. Guest blog posts are also very popular when an author has permission to publish an article on a popular blog site, thus getting a strong backlink. Forum posting is also a familiar way to build strong backlinks as long as the topic is relevant to the web page you are linking to.
The backlinking process for organic search results should be built slowly but steadily. Search engines are very smart nowadays and can pick up spam links from a mile away. It is always advisable to use white hat (ethical) methods when building backlinks to avoid being penalized by search engines.
In conclusion, it is always advisable to use many marketing channels to convey your marketing message. Use both online traffic generation methods, building paid and free organic traffic if your budget allows to get the momentum.