The 3 Components of Internet Advertising (Part 1 of 3)

According to information industry consultancy Outsell, the marketing dollars spent on the Web will finally surpass that spent on print this year, with $119.6 billion of revenues flowing online and $111.5 billion allocated to newspapers and magazine ads.

Thanks to the ever-expanding power of the Internet, advertising has become less wasteful and more measurable. Its unique power to inexpensively reach audiences around the globe at any time has made the Internet an invaluable asset to any business's marketing efforts. However, the complicated nature of Internet, or 'interactive,' advertising can be intimidating to those just recently throwing their hats into the online marketing arena.

Before throwing hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars into interactive advertising, business owners need to know the three main components to Internet advertising. This includes, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Internet Ads, and Social Media Marketing.

Search Engine Optimization

There is a much loved saying among the Interactive Advertising community that “If you're not on Google, your business doesn't exist.” Although this statement is true to an extent, there is much more to SEO than simply submitting your website to Google Search Engine.

The ultimate goal of SEO is to increase the quality or volume of traffic to your websites via search engines. SEO is founded on the theory that the higher a site appears in a search results list, the more likely that website will be selected by searchers. SEO strategies can be used to optimize your listing in many different type of search, such as location search, video search, image search, etc.

When speaking of the merits of SEO, Stoney deGeyter, President of Pole Position Marketing, said, ”Good SEO content does more than just help a site get rankings. It lets visitors know their search was successful, provides them the information they need, and leads them through the conversion process to achieve leads and sales (or whatever else is a conversion to you.)”

SEO considers not only how search engines work to generate page rankings, but also how people use search engines to find the information they are looking for. Good search engine optimized websites are designed to speak in your searcher's language through the use of keywords. Learning what keywords your audience is using to search for you then incorporating them into your website and source code is the second step to increasing relevant traffic to your website. What's the first step? Arguably the first and most important step to increasing SEO is to create a solid foundation for your web-presence by building a good website.

You can spend millions of dollars on SEO tactics and paid search, but if your website is lacking, it won't matter. This includes having clean code with relevant keywords, strong and fresh text, working links and making sure your pages load quickly (10 seconds or less).

Ensuring that your website is built well, content is engaging and interesting, and keywords are relevant will go a long way to increase not only the traffic sent to you website, but the length of time they spend there as well.

(Check back next week to learn more about Internet Advertisements)