Looking Under the Hood of Internet Marketing
When I started doing Internet marketing in 1995, there were not many books on the subject. Since then, there has been a surge of books on search engine optimization (SEO) and social media. What always strikes me is how dense and complex they are, given that many website owners and marketing directors have more on their plates than their websites. They need practical information that’s clearly implementable.
This blog will give you a strategic overview of—and practical tips for handling—the issues I have seen hundreds of site owners and marketing directors grapple with. In doing so, we do need to cover some fairly technical details or you won’t really understand the way it all fits together. With SEO for example, you need to know a bit about URLs and things like 301 redirects or it would be hard to see why we are recommending certain strategies like hiring an SEO company before your website design project begins. So please don’t skip over this level of basic technical info if you want to see the bigger picture of how the strategies truly work and fit together. We’ll provide more details and offer insights as new options become available and old techniques evolve. If you understand the big picture, you will save yourself from numerous heartaches, because in this industry, doing it right the first time can make or break your business and your budget.
If your website is poorly designed, or worse, looks good on the surface but has significant flaws that block conversions, your offline marketing dollars are being wasted. People almost invariably check out a company’s website when they are thinking about buying from or using the services of a company. So please keep an eye out for a future blog on conversion optimization before you do a website redesign.
The rise of social media has proven without question that web users are discovering detailed information about individual people and brands by looking at search results and mentions of companies on blogs, forums, review sites, Facebook, and Twitter. If you don’t keep track of what people are saying about you online and fail to join the conversation, you will look suspect to the even moderately web-savvy consumer. If you fail to track what people do when they get to your website and then update it with no knowledge of how your changes are affecting visitors, search results, and your social media presence, you are missing out on the power of the web. By formulating a solid plan to develop a quality site with engaging content that drives more traffic, encourages longer visits, and increases conversions, you can o
While Internet marketers may have a laugh at things like Newspaperdeathwatch.com, the effects of emerging changes in media now appear to be more serious than amusing. We are in the midst of a radical upheaval in the way marketing works. A handful of major brands have even gone so far as to drop all traditional advertising after seeing the power of the web. Many others are shifting budgets in ways we have never seen. Some companies are rethinking their actual products and services in response to new online marketing methods.
The CEO of Razorfish, one of the most respected and followed online marketing companies in the world, recently gave a presentation on why CEOs are terrified of Internet marketing.
It all came down to one thing. They don’t get it. And what they don’t understand terrifies them.
A monster in the dark is much scarier than the actual monster. You can shed light on this monster and how online marketing can help you grow your business, but it will take a relatively deep understanding of this world before you can get more comfortable in it or change your company’s foundation to keep up with it.
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