Do You Do Savvy Search Marketing?
Traffic generation is the most integral aspect of internet marketing. However, just any kind of traffic is not going to put money in your pocket. What is the point of having 10,000 visitors per day if all of them click the back button immediately after they land on your site? For example: You can create a website with a domain name that is the misspelt version of a very popular website such as facebook or youtube. Surely, your site will receive thousands of visitors but you will hardly make any money since people will go back as soon as they realise that they are on the wrong website. This proves that traffic is pretty much useless if you do not give people what they are looking for!
The key to success as an internet marketer is targeted traffic. This traffic converts easily and is even worth paying for. So how to attract targeted traffic to your website? Well, the most sure fire strategy for this is search marketing. Savvy search marketing enables you to reach out to the people who have actually performed a keyword search that is highly pertinent to your business. Search marketing covers two basic concepts, namely
- Search engine optimization (SEO) and
- Search engine marketing (SEM)
Let us learn a bit more about these two concepts
SEO:
This process involves attracting traffic to your website by improving your visibility in search engine rankings. SEO deals with acquiring FREE traffic – which means that you do not pay the search engines to send you visitors. The traffic generated by you is NATURAL and ORGANIC. The search engines feature your website in their results because they genuinely believe that you provide relevant and credible content on the keyword in question. The two main aspects of SEO include keyword research and link building. You have to determine the most popular and lucrative keywords in your niche and target them. Link building involves creating back-links to your website on other popular websites. SEO is a lot of hardwork – you really have to apply yourself and be very persistent if you want to generate traffic by relying strictly on SEO. However, SEO is crucial for establishing your authority and enhancing visibility. It is an indispensable part of internet marketing. There simply is no substitute for good content, relationship building, authority and reputation.
SEM:
It can take months and even years to create a high-traffic website or blog through SEO alone. Even if you do manage to create one, the search engines may suddenly change their algorithms and this have a detrimental effect on your ranking and earnings. What if you want to make money right now? What if you do not want to wait for a year before you start seeing 4, 5 and even 6 figure earnings? Well, Search Engine Marketing is the answer for you. However, this is a paid form of marketing. You are paying search engines (and publishers) to send targeted traffic to your site. This way, your visitors are already in the buying frame of mind and hence it is much easier to close the deal on them. SEM is highly popular among many internet marketers since it provides almost instantaneous results! However, many people lose a lot of money through SEM as they have no clue about how to create a successful campaign.
The savvy marketer will use a search marketing strategy that utilizes both – SEO as well as SEM. However, both these concepts are technical in nature and can be very confusing to non marketers. Even if you do manage to get a basic understanding of search marketing, it will be years before you manage to create an effective and competitive marketing campaign. Hence, feel free to learn about SEO and SEM by all means but if you want guaranteed results – hire a professional search marketing company to take care of search marketing. The small investment you make upfront will pay for itself many times over! There are also tools and other online products that can help you with your marketing efforts. Many of them we review on this site. You can see our product reviews here.
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