The QUESTION:
For the duration of 5 year web marketing career I have been asked the same question. How do I get my website ranked higher? How do I get more traffic? Or sometimes, almost incredulously, how do you get websites ranked higher? In the modern day of ultra-sophisticated borderline artificially intelligent search engine algorithms (formulas Google and the other the other search engines use to rank websites) this question could be considered along the lines of “what is the meaning of life”….anybody who understands search engine holistically knows there is no one right answer for marketing a website.
So maybe you belong to the growing market of web marketing newbies and rather not spend hours learning and researching search marketing. When starting out, how can you determine the best plan of action is for marketing a website? Well barring all extraneous circumstances or outliers the answer simply lies in fundamental economics (and you thought you were \done with high school/college economics…..)
The ANSWER in ONE SENTENCE.
Lets clean up the chalkboards and mute out the noise. Here is a simple formula you can apply to web marketing visibility.
Demand (Money + Time) = On line Visibility
Yes thats right. This simple algebraic equation is a baseline approach you must consider when promoting a website. Let me explain the variables to this formula.
MONEY
Welcome to the NOW generation. Most businesses are impatient and will quickly turn to only paid advertising for quick traffic and sales. This includes spending on paid advertising, paid linking, press releases, anything that costs money to get visibility on line. It could take months to rank for “New Balance running shoes” where it takes only 15 minutes to setup a Google Adwords campaign and start getting traffic immediately. However you must be willing to pay anywhere from $0.01 to over $50 a click for this traffic. Once your out of money, tough luck.
There is nothing wrong with spending money on paid advertising as long as your business is producing a positive ROI. Also considering this primary way search engine generate revenue (in fact Google makes 99% of its revenue through ad words) it’s unlikely the paid advertising will ever go obsolete. Our suggestion is to make sure you are carefully managing your paid accounts…or find a professional to manage them for you. Many people are clueless when it comes to setting up and managing ppc campaigns. Similar to hiring an accountant to save money on taxes, hire a legitimate search engine marketing professional to save money on pay per click and/or other forms of on line advertising
TIME:
It’s possible to generate on line visibility without spending a dime on paid advertising. This is usually accomplished through search engine optimization, blogging, social networking, etc. This is often more common with hobbyists/part timers who are under less pressure to generate on line revenue. The problem it may take several months to learn how to naturally promote a website and much longer to actually apply these tactics. Worse yet beginners may succumb to taking bad advice and end up wasting time and effort on learning search engine optimization. Plus it isn’t just about SEO anymore, there are new marketing options such as blogging, video promotion and social marketing.
Spending you own time promoting a website/blog can be very rewarding if you are diligent in your work. However remember the old cliché “time is money”. Do you really have extra time to devote to your project? If “yes” great, if no find someone to do it for you (unless you want to become a SEO professional).
Resources for
No comments:
Post a Comment