Posted on July 12th, 2010A lot of the marketing methods pushed by various online gurus and companies do not actually work. Internet marketing firms and individual specialists will do everything they can to sell you ads, banners, pop-ups, email lists and other things that will probably not work in your case.
It’s a very bad deal if you buy into these offers, as most of the times the customers you’re trying to reach by using email campaigns and intrusive ads and pop ups will actually be annoyed at your company and advertising methods. Of course, you can make it work, but that would require significant investments of both money and time. If you are new to online marketing or are on a tight budget, the best way to go is (and always was) Search Engine Optimization.
It has been proven time and time again that the best way to drive traffic to a web site in a short amount of time is by using Search Engine Optimization techniques.Over 80% of first time visitors to most web sites online get there by using a search engine (most often Google, Yahoo or Bing).
You can get much more useful traffic from Search Engines for free than you would get from various paid advertisements, banners and pop ups, because when people search for something on Google, for example, they are already sure of what they want and know that the search engine will give them the results they need.
That’s why it’s so important for your site to be in the top 5 results or at least on the first page.The only thing you have to do to make sure the visitors will like your site, stay for a longer time and come back later is to provide quality content that is really useful to them. If you follow this simple rule, the rest is relatively easy. If you break it, users will be disappointed in your site and so will be the Search Engines, which will most probably drop your site and pages to the bottom of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
Search Engine traffic is among the most valued traffic online, due to the reasons mentioned above, and millions of sites are taking advantage of it and use it for their own profits. But to be able to do that, your site must be optimized for Search Engines, otherwise your pages will never get high enough in SERPs for the people to notice them. You’ve got to learn the basics of Search Engine Optimization and apply them as soon as possible.
This includes relevant titles, keywords and descriptions for all your pages, correct meta tags, participation in other sites (by commenting and guest posting, for example) and social networks (by posting news on Digg or simply talking on forums) and getting links from other sites by writing good content worth linking to or simply asking for a link (or even inserting it in a guest post).
A correct Search Engine Optimization strategy actually benefits everyone: the search engines get loyal users that trust them, the users get whatever they want (information, tips, entertainment, etc.) and you make a profit by either being the provider of what users want or an intermediary getting a commission off every sale. Search Engine Optimization should be the first thing you think about and do whenever starting a new online venture, be it selling products, creating an informative site or launching any sort of online service.