Introduction To SEO

Talking about SEO to someone who has no idea what it is can be a difficult task. Search engine optimization is part of online marketing and is part science and part art. It is ever changing and can be difficult to digest in one sitting. Basically it is about getting your site ranked high in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Since Google has most of the market share most of your efforts are with that engine specifically since ranking well in Google leads to ranking well in others. It can be confusing but there are a few basics that everyone can follow to improve their search engine rankings.

There are two main parts to SEO: onsite and offsite optimization. Onsite refers to things that you can do on your site that will help with rankings. The basics are:

1. Using your keyword in the HTML title of the page
2. Using your keyword in the URL (this one isn’t mandatory but it does help a lot)
3. Using your keyword in the content of your page
4. Using your keyword in post titles and/or <h1> <h2> tags

To improve your current rankings if you haven’t optimized for SEO you could do things like:

* Optimizing HTML Titles
* Optimizing Page Content
* Optimized Tagging
* Optimized Linking Within Site

Search Engine Marketing

One of the many forms of internet marketing, search engine marketing involves paying for search engine traffic to accomplish the same thing. It also includes focuses on ranking well in search engines to get visitors to a site. SEO is generally considered its own thing but they fall under the same general category.  Both are effective but each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Increasing visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion all fall under the paying for traffic side of SEM. The most popular form is PPC or pay per click advertising and the prevailing reason for this is Google’s Adsense. Google is the largest search engine by far with over 70% market share with Yahoo way behind at second with about 15%. Microsoft is third with less than 10% but it has increased slightly for now since their new search engine’s release Bing.

Other forms Of Paid Search Advertising

There are several other types of paid SEM like directories, paid inclusion, paid placement, contextual ads, and shopping search.

What Is Internet Marketing

Internet marketing covers a wide range of topics but they all converge on a single idea: making money. Marketing is a huge business in the offline world so it makes sense that it is online as well. The Internet is a huge place and millions upon millions of people visit different websites every day. That means there are a lot of potential clients out there.

The main topics that the term “internet marketing” cover are search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, Web 2.0 (or social media) marketing, search engine marketing, and many others. There are also several business models that Internet marketing covers: e-commerce, publishing, lead based, and affiliate marketing. Which one of these is acceptable to your business depends on many factors not the least of being the size.

Geomarketing is a form of internet marketing for business that want local traffic for their business. It can also be used to show certain content to different visitors depending on their geographic location. That’s where the term comes from.

Compared to other forms of marketing, internet marketing is relatively cheap. It also reaches a much larger audience typically. Also with so many methods of reaching potential customers it is usually quiet effective.

If you are a business owner it is usually a good idea to learn internet marketing or at least hire someone who does know how. Not taking advantage of the huge potiental of the internet is an even bigger mistake, and one that could cost you millions in lost business.