Website Marketing

Website marketing is the broad term associated with all aspects of online marketing and website promotion. There are many different strings to the website marketing bow and internet marketing professionals need to be skilled in a variety of areas to cover such a broad occupation.

The complexities associated with website marketing are vast and hard to grasp at the best of times. The Internet is a constantly developing organism with technological advancements happening on a daily basis. Due to this internet marketers need to be plugged in to the industry to keep up with the competition and gain the best results for their clients.

Website Marketers stay abreast of the situation by interacting and exchanging knowledge with other industry members. There are many international conferences and meetings where web marketers give talks and present their ideas to the industry. There is also a wealth of information on-line; including forums, blogs, articles and newsletters. However, online marketers, and the rest of the online world, should be aware that some advice is bad advice. The vast amount of information out there only helps to compound the situation by offering contradictory advice and opinion on all manner of topics. The wise internet marketer learns to make his own judgement from all the information on offer.

The various aspects of online marketing include:

  • SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) - On Page Marketing.

Search engine optimisation is arguably the most important aspect of online marketing, mainly due to the fact that most online traffic starts at a search engine. SEO is the process of making a website as search engine friendly as possible to increase the chances of the site being indexed and looked upon favourably by the search engines. That is the quick summary but in reality search engine optimisation is made up of a vast amount of different elements. The main aspects to be considered are:

  • Keyword research
  • Code Optimisation
  • Site Architecture Optimisation
  • Link Building
  • Copywriting and Content Building
  • Server Management
  • Site / Traffic Analytics

New websites should always be built with search engines in mind, from the very start! By doing this you are making sure the site is getting the best possible start in the online world. Website marketers should work closely with designers and web developers to ensure that all current SEO standards are met.

  • Social Media Optimisation (SMO), Link Building – Off Page Optimisation.

One of the first things that an internet marketer learns is that links play a big part in success on the search engines (particularly Google). The more links you have coming into your site the better! A successful internet marketer will be able to establish many inbound links for you and (like all website marketing techniques) there is a huge variety of methods used to do this:

  • Social media interaction
  • Industry interaction
  • Link exchanges
  • Directories

Social Media offers the internet marketer a new frontier in customer interaction. Social interaction sites such as YouTube, MySpace and FaceBook are now becoming more frequent in the search engine results and Website marketers have been quick to jump on this trend by creating videos, MySpace and FaceBook profiles or social groups for their clients. These provide direct interaction with the customer, this further raises their online profile and creates natural, viral marketing.

The arrival of social interaction sites has only been possible thanks to Web 2.0 (as it has now been christened). Web 2.0 takes advantage of increasing connection speeds and file transfer rates. Before the advent of Broadband there was no way that sites as vast and complex as these could have functioned.

  • PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising

“Pay per Click” advertising is the process of paying for a direct visit from a customer. This type of online campaign can be very effective for the right business, but also costly. In part it depends on the nature of the product that you’re selling. You will rarely find a non eCommerce site at the end of a paid link because it would not be worth the initial investment by the site owner.

PPC is a great way to create instant traffic for your site but in the long run it is more efficient to be at the top of the search engines natural listings. Time after time it has been proven that a search engine user is more likely to click on the natural listings. This is because they are trusted and are seen to have earned their position in the top ten positions due to their reputability. Sadly, this is not always the case!

Website marketing will undoubtedly become more and more essential as the World Wide Web continues to expand and develop. So far the internet has experienced a high, a low and now a re-birth with Web 2.0. “Touch wood” it looks like the web has developed to a self sustainable level. If that is the case then Website Marketing is here to stay.