So you’ve just got your amazing new website designed. What now? How do you get your target market/audience to explore your new online business home? The answer? Online Marketing.
Online Marketing, also known as internet marketing, is the art of using various techniques and methods to advertise and sell products or services via the internet. These techniques and methods can be categorized into the following: E-mail marketing, YouTube Marketing, Blogging, Social Media Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and more.
However, today I would like to focus on one main category of online marketing, Search Engine Results. Search Engine Results is divided into two subgroups – SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Pay Per Click (paid advertising). More specifically, I would like to focus on Google AdWords.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is a natural/organic way of getting your website to display within the top results on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This type of online marketing needs upkeep and will need to be maintained over time to ensure that the results are consistent. SEO provides organic search results.
SEO is a great way to build brand awareness and a lasting company image on the internet.
The concept of SEO is simple – optimize your website to be “search-engine-friendly”, however executing this is a difficult and time-consuming task. SEO is not a once-off online marketing tool that you can use to promote your business, it is a long-term investment. The ROI of SEO is great and cannot be compared to any other marketing as it all depends on how competitive your niche market is regarding SEO and of course how good your team of SEO experts are.
Hiring the right SEO company is essential. Do not rush this step, if you do, you can either get your website banned and blacklisted on search engines or you could get the best online marketing out there. As mentioned above, SEO is a long-term investment, this means that every SEO/Website Design company out there that promise 1st Page Google results for X amount of money is wasting your money on cheap/illegal tricks. These tricks usually work for about a week or two, but once Google, Bing or Yahoo notices these tricks (and they will), your website and the domain name will be blacklisted and removed from their search results. SEO isn’t a cheap service, it takes hours of tricky work. Quality online marketing companies know what their SEO is worth.
Google AdWords (Pay Per Click advertising)
Pay Per Click advertising, also known as PPC, is a method of getting 1st Page / Top search engine results by paying X amount of money for that 1st Page / Top position. Google AdWords has a system that allows users to bid on a certain keyword to rank within the top results. For example, if your business sells used cars, you would bid on keywords like “used cars”, “second-hand cars” etc, and when someone types in “used cars” in Google, your website will appear all the way at the top of the search results. This form of online marketing can be very effective if used right and the ROI can be measured very accurately.
Even though Google AdWords sounds like a simple and easy to use online marketing tool, it has to be done by an expert. Countless people have blown thousands of Rands by adding an extra 0 to a few keywords or wasted their money by targeting the wrong search groups. Running a successful Google AdWords campaign is also a very tricky and time-consuming process, however, unlike SEO, Google AdWords will give you an immediate result. Getting a professional online marketing company to run your Google AdWords campaign will optimize your ROI and ensure that your search engine ads are correct and professional.
Online Marketing Conclusion
Both SEO and Google AdWords have their advantages and disadvantages. Choosing one over the other is completely up to the circumstances of the business. However, choosing both will always be a good decision. Running a Google AdWords campaign while doing SEO on your website is the ultimate online marketing solution. This will ensure that you are getting real-time results and traffic to your website from Google AdWords but you will also increase your SEO quality as search engines want to feature websites that are getting a lot of traffic.
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