An online presence such as a website is important, but without proper marketing it can yield little or no results . There is more to marketing your business online than just setting up a website. A systematic process of online marketing techniques must be used. But where to start? The most important question all businesses must ask themselves is “How can potential clients and visitors find my website?“. The answer is online marketing.
Online marketing is the process of delivering promotional messages to customers. One way to do this is to start by setting up a good base of operations, such as a website. But if this is not marketed correctly, it won’t be successful, and the target market you were trying to reach will be missed.
By controlling and directing the flow of traffic to your website, you can successfully market your business online, and generate more enquiries. But how do you do this?
Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation, or more commonly known as SEO, is an online marketing technique that affects the visibility of a web page in a search engine’s results. By following the best practices of SEO, which are forever changing, you can positively affect the visibility of your website online, so that it appears higher up in a search engine’s results.
To do this, you must establish a list of “keywords” you want to rank for. These are things that you would search for to yield a result. By optimising your website’s content to include keywords, you are basically telling a search engine what your website does, and from here, it knows where to place your website in its results.
SEO is not purely based on keywords. On-page optimisation is also important. This plays a key factor in determining your rankings in a search engine. By laying your website out structurally and methodically, and by following the latest SEO practices, you are telling a search engine what it wants to know, such as your services, your location, your main business outcome; whatever it may be that determines where you are placed on Google.
These basic methods of SEO affect the visibility of a website “organically”. But sometimes, to get the edge over your competitors, you need to take additional steps.
White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO is organic, or natural, and is focussed on targeting a human audience opposed to search engines, and follows the best practices of SEO. By optimising your website, and following these latest SEO practices, you are undertaking a natural SEO process. There are other methods of organic SEO, such as link building, and writing content for human readers, such as blog posts.
Link Building is the process of promoting your website’s URL online so that it becomes popular, similar to handing out flyers or business cards, but more controlled. You can control, for the most part, which websites you want your website’s URL to appear on, as some websites will be more beneficial for your business and will yield greater results. Basic forms of link building involve setting your business up on local directories, such as Yellow Pages or Hotfrog, and linking this back to your website, which feeds traffic through to your website. This is known as an inbound link or a backlink, and search engines will rank your website based on the quality of the link, by determining the relevance of your site and the directory it has been posted to.
Other Forms of Online Marketing
SEO is not an appropriate strategy for every website, and although the basic techniques above are a requirement for all websites to be indexed successfully in search engines such as Google, other steps may be more beneficial to some websites, instead of increased amounts of SEO. Depending on your business type, requirements, target base and target area, the following techniques may be more beneficial to some businesses than others.
Other forms of online marketing such as Search Engine Marketing, Display Advertising, and Affiliate Marketing can be used. The most popular are Google Adwords and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. However, these require time, and persistent vigilance in terms of monitoring, to ensure an adequate return on investment is achieved, and that all target markets and goals are being reached. Often, this will require setting up analytics programs to measure results, and based on these results, the marketing strategy may have to be adjusted to improve a site’s conversion rate.
Social Media Marketing
With the increased use of Social Media, many businesses are using this as an opportunity to target potential customers and to increase the traffic to their website. Facebook is the most popular, and this allows businesses to set up campaigns and promotions, which actively search for users based within a range of target results. These target results may be relative to age, gender, location, jobs, and even likes. Most people with Facebook would have noticed the “Suggested Posts” that appear throughout their News Feed. This is achieved through Facebook Advertising, and is becoming an increasingly popular method to target potential clients and customers. This is a more direct approach to marketing, but in today’s rushed, digital world, it is becoming a more successful strategy.
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No matter your business type, the team at Webics can successfully setup an online marketing strategy tailored for your business and its requirements. With over 300 clients and counting, we understand the needs of our clients, and tailor each package to suit your budget, requirements, and target markets. In today’s complex, fast-paced digital world, it is hard to keep up with the advancements in successfully marketing your business online. Why not let the team at Webics do this for you? Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help grow your business online.
