Table of Contents - *Note - This document was originally built as a PDF, thus some functionality/internal linking has not been updated as of yet.
Introduction
Section I: Keywords and Keyword Research
Section II: Copy and Content Creation
Section III: Link Building
Section IV: Utilizing Analytics
Section V: Social Media
Section VI: Code Optimization
Section VII: Pay Per Click Advertising
Section VIII: Resources
- Helping you know what you can do yourself
- Helping you know when you probably need a professional
- When the time comes to get a professional, knowing what things to look for and what things to avoid
- Showing you the potential of SEO and internet marketing
- Giving you a basic understanding of how SEO and internet marketing can increase your business
- Organic search results: The search results displayed in the left column when you search for something on Google, Yahoo!, or Bing (the three major search engines). These are unpaid search results. Note: Google and others have started to add a few advertisements to the top of their organic search results at times.
- Search engine optimization (SEO): The standard set of web marketing practices that helps your site get ranked highly in search engines’ organic search results.
- Social media marketing (SMM): The web has become a social playground. Social media marketing refers to the standard set of marketing practices designed to help you leverage the social aspect of the internet to grow your business.
- Paid search traffic: Advertisements placed on websites and search engines (Google places these ads on the right side of their search criteria) that businesses pay to have displayed when people search for certain things.
- Viral marketing: The term generally used for the development of products or content designed to grow in popularity naturally or
“virally” across the web, with little to no promotion. - Pay-per-click (PPC): This refers to an internet marketing strategy where you can build ads on ad networks (Google’s AdWords is the most popular) that can distribute your ad across the web. You pay Google (or your ad network provider) each time someone clicks on your ad. Note: There are options to
be paid per number of impressions (how many times your ad is displayed), but that topic is not heavily covered here. - Growth of targeted website traffic
- Increase in sales
- Increased level of marketing ROI
- Lower costs on advertising
- More store foot traffic
- Increased brand recognition
- Increased sales efficiency
- New options for growth and development
- New partnership opportunities
- Better understanding of competitive position
- Developed web strategy for future business growth
- New market opportunities
- Keyword research
- Copy/content creation (overlaps with viral marketing)
- Link building
- Analytics
- Code optimization
- Social media
- PPC
- You may also find Introduction to Internet Marketing and Planning helpful if you are interested in learning more about what makes up internet marketing
- Keyword research – The practice of researching keywords to be utilized on a website.
Introduction:
If you’re a business owner, a web-savvy individual or someone who uses the internet for work, you’ve likely come across the term “search engine optimization,” and maybe in the same thought, dismissed it as a technical term you have no use for, that has little bearing on your life or bottom line.
However, if you were told you could efficiently turn one dollar into two, five, or even 100 dollars by utilizing internet marketing effectively, you might decide to pay attention. And if you were told that on top of helping you grow your dollars, internet marketing can help you run your business more efficiently, understand your target market better, and know your competition more thoroughly, you might REALLY decide to listen (at least long enough to determine whether the claim is bogus).
Consider yourself told – the effective use of internet marketing can help you take one dollar and turn it into many, many more, all while helping you understand your target market better, know your competition, and help your business run efficiently.
Understanding the core concepts of internet marketing will provide you with a starting point for enlarging your chunk of the 213 million searches conducted every day (source: Pew Internet Research). This is not a guide to guaranteed overnight success, but it should help you gain internet marketing basics that have quickly become some of the most powerful and cost-effective marketing solutions in the world. The intent of this document is to help you save and make money by:
Definitions
These are some broad terms that you’ll find throughout this document. At the beginning of each chapter, we’ll address some terms that are relevant to the content of the chapter. At the end of this document, there’s a glossary as well.
Why should I care about internet marketing and SEO – besides the reasons above?
“While normal advertising interrupts people, search allows you to sell what your customers want, when they want it. Search is not intrusive, and does not look or feel like any other form of advertising.” –Aaron Wall, SEO Book
Using search engines is the international standard for how people gather information on the internet, and the number of people who search for information grows every day. The techniques of web marketing, including SEO, SEM and SMM, are the foundational building blocks for getting your message or product to the people who are looking for it right now. How much would you pay to get your product in front of a buyer who is actively searching for it? What is the value of a single customer who found your product and is now raving about it to everyone they know? Web marketing is easily among the most cost-effective forms of marketing for achieving low dollar-per-customer pitches and building company advocates.
What NOT to expect from internet marketing and SEO:
Internet marketing and SEO specifically are NOT silver bullets. They are not guaranteed one-hit wonders, and they are not built on a simple to-do list that will lead to overnight internet success.
What to expect from internet marketing and SEO:
The tools and tactics that make up these two fields are designed to help you promote your business online, just as other tools and tactics are designed to help you promote your business offline.
Proper utilization can lead to:
When should I use internet marketing and SEO?
If you have a website of any kind that you want people to visit, you should be implementing SEO and internet marketing tactics. It’s that simple. Utilizing these tools is especially important if you have a site from which you are trying to generate revenue. As you’ve likely heard a million times, without effectively spreading the word, the best product or idea in the world won’t get you anywhere.
Elements of internet marketing and SEO
These are some of the most common elements or tactics that make up internet marketing and SEO:
The next sections of this document provide an overview of what elements go into utilizing each of these tactics. If you want more information on the topics covered, there are a variety of resources are included at the end of this document for further reading and study.
Whether you choose to learn on your own, or you realize that your time and money can be better spent hiring a professional, this document and external resources should provide a basic level of education to help you make an informed decision.
A note on the major search engines and how they crawl the web
Search engines explore the web by sending out spiders (bots, crawlers, etc.) that follow links from one site to another. While it’s not public information, it is believed they start at what are considered highly trusted sites, such as government websites, and move out from that point, following links, and discovering sites as they go.
Each of the major three search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing) has some unique elements that make ranking highly for each one a little different from the next. While we don’t go into depth on algorithms or exactly how search engines are crawling and indexing the web in this document, it is important to take note that success in one place does not guarantee success in another.
If you are interested in this topic, consider researching the differences between the search engines and how they gather, interpret, and handle data. After all, the more you understand what they are doing, how they are doing it, and why they are doing it, the better equipped you’ll be able to successfully build your online presence.
Section Glossary
