Sometimes referred to as online or e-marketing, internet marketing , perhaps confusingly, isn’t really about “selling” anything – it’s about generating traffic to a site so that the business can build a list of prospects. While visitors are looking around and obtaining information they are virtually leading themselves to the product or service they want which will effectively sell itself via the sales information pages.

So How Do You Start?

You don’t have to be an online genius, but basic knowhow will certainly make it easier to get started. The easiest advice is to copy someone who is already doing it successfully! Find a mentor in the same or a related industry and discover their keys to internet marketing success. Even if they can only tell you one new thing, it’s still one new thing you didn’t have to wade through pages and pages of the internet to find out and best of all, you know it works.

If that’s not an option for you, then be prepared to read. A lot. The fact is, no one knows exactly how search engines calculate their algorithms, unless of course they happen to be the algorithm programmer for a search engine. Having said that however, there are a lot of educated guesses and ‘tried and tested’ techniques.

SEO companies spend hours of their time and often thousands of dollars doing their own research and online marketing tests in order to better serve their clients. Best of all, most SEO companies will give some of that information away for free! Why? Because giving a little away for free can help them gain a following.

Chances are that sooner or later, one of their readers will either think “This is too hard, I’ll pay them to do it!” or (better yet for everyone) their company will become too big for them to reasonably handle their internet marketing themselves. At this point they’re very likely to outsource it to – you guessed it – their favourite ‘go to’ SEO company.

Of course, the benefit to you is that you can get great internet marketing tips for free, saving you time and preventing you from making expensive mistakes as you learn. The trick is to find sites that give great advice because, like every industry, there are varying standards in addition to the varied approaches to meeting search engine requirements.

What To Look For

Look for sites that offer information that is well formulated, clearly explained, original and regularly updated with market trends as well as all those hints and tips you’re looking for.  The prettiest sites aren’t always the most valuable, so don’t write a site off immediately if you don’t like the design, it’s the online version of judging a book by its cover. Just remember that while design is subjective, content is king.

Why You’re Doing This (Again)

Internet marketing is an essential part of any online sales strategy and you want to make sure that you’re getting the most from your campaign. An effective, well thought out strategy is worth serious investment of time because the monetary returns can be significant.

More traffic to your site = more potential leads. So take the time to do your online research, because internet marketing can be the difference between sales starvation and a buffet.

Final Point

Remember, always, that when you are designing content for your website, you’re not designing it for you – you are designing it for your visitors. Keep that in mind and you won’t be able to help but create valuable content.

If you’d like to know how Agile SEO can take all this off your hands and let you get back to doing what you do, contact us today!