Online Marketing - Getting The Basics Right.

Online Marketing. It’s a buzz word you have probably heard a lot over the last few years in your day-to-day lives. Chances are though you’re not really too sure exactly what it’s made up of. This article seeks to provide a little bit of general information on exactly what online marketing is all about.

Typically, the bulk of online marketing is broken down into two sides – PPC and SEO. Combined this is SEM. Is that too many abbreviations for you? No problems. Here’s what it all means. SEM stands for search engine marketing and basically covers any effort you can make online to promote your business via search engines like Google. PPC stands for “pay-per-click” – it’s a generic term to cover the sort of paid ads you’ll find on Google, Youtube, Facebook etc. Finally there’s SEO – Search Engine Optimization. This is a series of steps you can take to improve your website’s performance so that it appears higher when people search for a certain keyword. Combined they all can be considered online marketing and anyone can make big bucks by learning a few tricks in the field.

Of course there is much more to online marketing than just focusing on SEO or PPC. There’s content marketing – distributing your posts out to the big bad world (like this one) with a view to driving traffic. There’s viral online marketing which is creating awesome “shareable” content that people will spread among their social networks, and hopefully promote your brand in the process. There’s EDM – electronic direct marketing – which includes things like building mailing lists and sending out email driven marketing messages. If you’re considering small business online marketing there really is so much to consider.

The world of online marketing is varied, and there are pros and cons to either option. With PPC for example you will see instant results in the forms of traffic and conversions for your site. The cost of the ads though can be very high, especially for competitive terms. With something like SEO the effects will take longer to kick in, but with the right strategy behind you the cost comes down.

If you want to become an online marketeer and make a living out of it, I recommend you signup for a coaching program by one of the best in the field.

Of course the world of search engines, social networks and online marketing in general is constantly changing. What works today might not necessarily work in the future. As such if you’re interested in online marketing at all it’s important to keep yourself educated. Read the various blogs (SEOMoz, Search Engine Land, Mashable etc) and follow the online trendsetters to ensure you’re always up to date with the latest and greatest. This is particularly true in the SEO industry where a Google algorithm change can have huge impacts.

So just what is a Google algorithm update? That’s a topic for another post…


Author bio:
Michael Costin is a digital marketer from Sydney, Australia. In his spare time he enjoys blogging and doing internet stuff for other people.