Web Marketing – What’s Your Internet Marketing Strategy?
When it comes to web marketing there are basically two types of internet marketing strategy. When you break all the hoopla and hyped up information down to the lowest common denominator, there is search engine optimization, and social networking.
Both of the web marketing strategies can work to drive more traffic to your website, and which you should use will depend on what your goals are for your website.
Search Engine Optimization
Basically Search Engine Optimization or SEO is building your web page so the search engines will find your site and rank it at the top of the search engine results page or SERP. There are a lot of little things that go into SEO, but basically it breaks down to these 3 things.
- Do thorough keyword research
- Build a search engine friendly web site or page
- Build links
Of course within step two you need to write good quality content that your readers will find useful. Generally when building this type of website you can monetize very well with adsense and/or affiliate programs. Your traffic will be well targeted because or your keywords, so you will know people coming to your site are interested in what you are offering.
When keyword research is done well you can drive large amounts of traffic to your site very easily. Once the traffic is at your site, because they came looking for something specific, you can often get them to click on links, whether they are ads or products.
Social Networking
Basically social network marketing works by producing content and then letting the rest of the world know it is available through social communities. These communities are divided into two distinctly different groups.
- Social Networking Communities
- Bookmarking Communities
Social networking communities include places like Digg, as well as larger sites like Myspace and Facebook. A big factor for success in this type of web marketing is being part of the community, actually participating, and letting people get to know you.
Bookmarking communities are a place you can simply bookmark a site you enjoy. These include big names like StumbleUpon and Delicious. By bookmarking your favorite sites you allow others to see what it is you’re doing.
The basics of Social Networking Marketing break down to these 3 fundamentals.
- Create great content ~ Using catchy headlines, and titles
- Submit your content to social networking communities and bookmarking sites
- Interact in communities, make friends, and build your brand in your field.
Social networking can send a rush of traffic to your sites. In fact, I’ve heard of people getting a big Digg or StumbleUpon surge and it knocking out their servers. One issue with this traffic is it may not be as highly targeted keyword traffic. You may get tons and tons of traffic but they may not be interested or they may just be “stumbling through” and not really look at your content and may be less likely to click on your links whether they are ads or products.
As you can see there are two distinct web marketing strategies available to you. Which one will work for you? It completely depends on who you are and what you want to do.
If you are not a sociable person, don’t want your name out there, don’t want to interact with other people, I highly suggest you don’t go the social marketing route. A big part of its success is being very visible in the online community.
On the other hand, if that’s your favorite part of being online is meeting new people it might be perfect for you. Understand you will have to keep working, and keep interacting with people to keep your traffic coming. Social networking is not very residual. You can’t really do it once and keep making money for a long time to come. It’s something you have to be very consistent with. Keep taking consistent action.
Search Engine Optimization will take some time upfront. You will have to find keywords people are looking for, and that aren’t too competitive. You will have to write good content and you will have to spend time building links back to your site. Yes, this stuff takes time and effort. A lot of it is boring, tedious. When you are done, and your keywords are showing up number one in google you are pretty much done! You can expect to continue to receive traffic from those keywords for a long time to come with little to no more effort on your part.
As you can see there are two very distinct internet marketing paths you can take. It will depend on you as a person as well as your business which you should choose. I will say search engine optimization is going to provide you with a much more targeted and long term residual income than social traffic ever can. Yes, it’s nice to see those big social spikes on your stat counter, but if they don’t convert to clicks or sales, why bother?
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Social bookmarking is in these days.. it build you a lot of links and moreover get your a lot of targetted traffic