marketing strategy

Internet Marketing

John Reese

At Last - A Plain English Guide to Internet Marketing

Search Engine Marketing Services
There are so many different business opportunities available
on the Web; the never-ending stream of offers .....

Have you ever been horrified and intimidated at the convoluted, jargon-reliant information about Internet marketing available on the Net'

Often it results in many companies becoming confused and therefore reluctant to put into practice what would be a valuable and simple business resource when understood and applied correctly.

Market Research consultant for Inteltab, Gordon Goodfellow, who is also an English literature graduate, decided it was time for a change. Part of this desire to make Internet marketing more accessible may be due to his past experience as a teacher.

"I was sick of all the gobbledegook that surrounds the Internet, even today," he explains.

"Marketing on the Net isn't rocket science and should not be presented as such. Everyone should have access to it. That's the beauty of it."

Having spent four years researching and assessing the best way of getting an effective message across on the Internet, he began to design a basic introduction to Internet marketing. The result of this hard work is Applied Web Marketing. AWM is a comprehensive beginner's guide to marketing on the Internet, covering everything from domain names to e-commerce and merchant accounts, and written in plain English. This is designed for the small business user and the home business user who does not want to spend a fortune on outside "experts".

The key to most of Internet marketing is search engine optimisation. The key to good search engine optimisation is keyword research. In other words, knowing which keywords or search terms people are using to find what they're looking for on the Internet. If keyword research is done properly then there is no doubt that you will get highly targeted visitors to your website. This is obviously the professional way of going about things. It is the antithesis to the "spam" approach (unsolicited commercial emails) which achieves extremely poor results and simply annoys anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end.

But which search engine should you optimise for' The search engine of choice at the moment is Google. There are two good reasons for this. Firstly, Google is the most popular search engine on the Internet today. It is known for the quality and relevance of its search results, and so people trust it. Secondly, over the last couple of years Google has joined alliances with other search engines and directories. AOL and Netscape share Google's search findings, so you'll have similar search results on the AOL and Netscape databases. Other lesser databases also rely on Google, so that if you are well represented on Google, then you'll be well represented on over sixty per cent of Internet search facilities.

Yahoo, the world's most popular directory, has since launched its own search engine, which makes it now a main competitor to Google (in the past Yahoo took its own results from Google's database). You can still submit your site to Yahoo for free, but expect a listing to take several weeks.For a more immediate effect you may wish to explore Yahoo's alliance with Pay Per Click engine Overture.

Microsoft is also said to be developing its own search engine as part of its MSN sphere of influence. Expect this to be a major player as well.

You should also obtain a listing on the Open Directory Project (DMOZ.org) which is not much known about but very well respected in the search engine optimisation industry. The Open Directory does not use the normal search engine "spiders" or robot searchers; instead it uses over thirty thousand volunteer human editors who are ostensibly experts in their own fields. The theory behind this is that it ensures relevancy, accuracy and quality of all listings. A listing in DMOZ will therefore ensure a listing on Google and probably earn you an enhanced ranking ......