What exactly is Internet Marketing?
Published by fongrich on Tagged Internet MarketingBefore May, I thought Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was it. If my website ranks high in search engines, traffic will flood in, I monetize that traffic, and I’ll be rolling in dough. So I focused much of my effort into SEO activities like link exchange, keyword optimization, and search engine submissions. I received ok results… My website has a PageRank of 5 and it’s listed on the top page of MSN for a few important keyword phrases. However, I am nowhere to be found on Google or Yahoo, probably due to my link exchange activities. I outsourced my link exchange, so I don’t really know exactly what they did. Anyway, my traffic was minimal. It was around 200-300 impressions a day. I know if I were on the top page of Google, I’d probably get 10 times the traffic.
So what did I learn about Internet Marketing? Well, I had part of the solution. SEO is important. However, the way I was going at it was short termed. I was basically trying to manipulate the system (not doing a great job either). For long-term success with SEO, you really need quality content and incoming links to the site. Content is relatively easy. Write it yourself or hire someone to do it for you. You can go to Ezine article websites and paste them on, although duplicate content doesn’t help your cause nearly as much as original content in terms of SEO goes.
The tricky part is getting quality links to your site. I always thought link exchange was the most proactive thing to do, other than waiting for people to find you, which will never happen because the site can’t be found anywhere if it’s not ranked. Kind of Catch 22. What I learned is that there are many strategies you can use to achieve quality links with relatively minimal effort in comparison to link exchange (which is extremely tedious). I am not going into details in this entry, because you can write a book on each strategy.
Ways to get quality links other than link exchange:
Ezine articles
Press Release (My favorite, although I haven’t implemented yet. Will talk more later)
Blog
Forum
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You probably noticed that not only will you get higher ranking from Search Engines (resulting in more traffic), but you’ll also get a lot of referral traffic from having your links in other relevant websites.
Although SEO is critical to Adsense revenue, some of the most successful Internet Marketers don’t even need SEO at all. They use their existing customer/prospect list, Joint Venture, affiliates and/or buy traffic. These strategies are mainly used to sell products, which I will eventually move toward. For now, I am more focused on establishing steady Adsense revenue, which relay mainly on SEO traffic.
Bringing in traffic is just the tip of the iceberg. You also need strategies once your traffic is in your site. That’s where email marketing, forums, blogs, review and paid ads come into play. Once you have monetized the traffic either through ad, affiliate or your own product, you’ll need to follow up to maximize your profit from your existing customer. It’s a lot easier to sell to an existing satisfied customer than to find a new one.
In summary, SEO is just a small part of Internet Marketing. There is so much involved in the whole process. I guess that’s why not many people succeed at first. However, if you learn from the REAL experts, execute and stick with it, the opportunities are plentiful.
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My little diagram of Internet Marketing. I am sure things will change as I learn more.
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