If you’re looking for a quick guide to online marketing, then let’s not waste your time and get right down to the point. Here are some of the more important marketing tools you can use to boost your online presence:

Search engine optimization

One of the first things we’ll discuss in this web marketing 101 guide is increasing the visibility of your website by applying search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. SEO involves “optimizing” a website around a set of keywords to make it more attractive to search engines like Google or Bing.

When a search engine user types in a specific set of keywords, a well-optimized website can rank in the top listings of a search engine’s results page. This makes it easier for potential visitors to find and visit your site instead of the competition.

Create content with backlinks

Any good guide to online marketing needs to cover backlinks. This involves creating online content that people find relevant, useful, and interesting, and then adding a link within the content that links them back to your website. Some of the more common examples include writing articles related to the content of your website, creating how-to tutorials, posting videos on You Tube or, posting a comment on a blog. All these content-based items should include a link back to your own website.

Opt-in programs

All websites that sell products or services should include an opt-in box. Visitors have the option to receive a “special offer” or free giveaway when they give you their email address and opt-in to your mailing list. The special offer or giveaway should be a reward for potential visitors and customers to receive in exchange for allowing you to send them emails. Examples of good giveaways include e-books, e-courses, downloadable audio or video, newsletters, success tips, and/or strategies. The content needs to be extremely relevant to the visitor. In the long run, you hope to convert casual visitors into paying customers while encouraging current customers to stay loyal to your business.

Social networking

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ are great marketing tools if used strategically with other marketing 101 strategies. These tools allow you to reach out to a wider audience while keeping touch with the needs and wants of your current audience. You need to be careful with social networks because an unhappy visitor can instantly post less than positive feedback about your business, or products and services to a big online audience. It’s best to use social networks as a place to post information of interest to your potential customers-rather than using these platforms to sell products. The object of the game is to build relationships with your visitors-and eventually make them your customers or clients.

Other Online interaction

One of the simplest methods that many overlook is simply interacting with potential customers in online communities. Go out and talk to people – give advice and share your expertise.

Online forums and blogs can be great places to interact with people and share your expertise on a particular subject matter. You can then discreetly insert a link leading back to your website. In these communities be careful not to self promote too aggressively. You want to appear as someone trying to give help-this gives the perception of being an expert in your field. People want to establish relationships and ultimately buy from people they perceive as experts.

Your web marketing 101 guide should include: SEO for your site, create web content and distribute it with links back to your website, develop attractive opt-in programs, use social networks to keep an open line of communication, and interact with the people you want visiting your site. Make these simple strategies part of your own online marketing guide consistently and you’ll see an increase in your web traffic and ultimately your customer base.

A big mistake that businesses make is to simply put their current company literature onto a website and expect this to be sufficient to have a maximum impact online. A business does not want a web visitor to have the same experience that they could have from offline literature. The business website must utilise the potential of the internet and form a website that is engaging and communicates to the web visitor on many levels. A successful online business utilises the creativity and communication techniques that can be sought online to give the customer an interactive experience on the website.

Having an interactive ecommerce solution is now an obligation for businesses to sell online. Many businesses fail to add certain elements to their website which engage with the customer, here are the top elements that need to be included in an ecommerce software solution:

• Social Bookmarking: The recent Google algorithm update has meant the need for an ecommerce solution to have a social presence is now a necessity. There is now huge traffic and potential customers on social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The ecommerce software must have the ability to link into these sites and interact with their customers. Having sharing buttons on the ecommerce solution so that customers can spread the word on your behalf to their friends and colleagues is a priceless marketing tool and is so simple to incorporate.
• The businesses social presence is now benefitting the businesses search results more than ever with the algorithm update. This means that increasing the social brand will benefit the traffic and potential sales. By adding these ‘share’ buttons and ‘like’ buttons will increase your social presence and now that the search engines are using a websites social status as an element when ranking the website they are essential tools that need to be incorporated.
• Email Newsletter: Collecting web visitors’ information and statistics is fundamental to the success of an online business, knowing their web habits and behaviours will give the business an advantage over competition. By adding a ‘subscribe to newsletter’ option, the business is then able to gain an email address of the web visitor and interact via email. When the email list starts to grow, it can be become one of your most valuable marketing tools as information can sent directly to the web visitors’ inbox. By engaging with the customer, with their consent, the ecommerce solution is more likely to make a sale, as the customer has expressed an interest in the website already.

Incorporating these elements into a business website will gain the website an exposure to your customers and interact with them to create sales. By utilising the social market will give the business an exposure to a market that is growing all the time and will be the future of how a customer finds your product or service.

This is a simple internet marketing guide. Hopefully this guide will share a few good ideas about selling things on the world wide web. The first and most important step is having quality products or services that people want. Without a good product or service that your customers value, no matter how good your advertising, you will not make a lot of money.

You want to get high ranking by the major search engines. Having your business land among the first ten results from a search is very important in a marketing plan. Customers find your web sites through the major search engines. Otherwise, potential customers will not even know that you exist.

Back links are links to your web site from another web site. It is one of the most important criteria used by search engines use. Search engines will give a good search result ranking when a site has a lot of links from other web pages. You can buy advertising on other web sites that share the same theme or target audience. Purchasing advertising will certainly create back links. You can also ask web sites if they would put a link to your site if you put a link to their site on your web page. Posting on web forums, blogs and social networking sites will also produce back links.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a collection of techniques to get good rankings from the search engines. There are coding techniques that will make it easier for search engines to find your web site. The use of key words and phrases is an important part of search engine optimization. A key word or phrase are what people type into the search string. By using relevant and effective key words and phrases throughout your web page, search engines will be more likely to find you. The Title tag is a very important tag and must be coded properly. The Title tag is displayed on the search results. The search engines use the Title tag to index web sites. The Meta tags are not used by popular engines. However, many web masters still use them. It is probably a good idea to still use Meta tags because they may be used in the future.

Ad campaigns must be directed to an intended audience. It is important to identify the population likely to be interested in your products and services. Your selection of key words and phrases must be selected carefully to attract the specific demographic you are targeting. The major search engines have ad campaigns that allow you to bid on key words and phrases. You can monitor the response received on each specific key word or phrase and make adjustments accordingly. This type of keyword campaign is cost effective. You only pay for clicks on your ad. You bid the maximum amount you are willing to pay for each click per keyword.

You can also use television, newspaper and magazine advertising. These traditional advertising media can be used to draw visitors to your website. The same ground rules of targeting your audience and customers apply.

It is important have good statistics to understand how your ad is doing. Keyword ad campaigns sponsored by the major search engines provide a complete statistical analysis of each campaign. You can use this data to make adjustments. It is likely that you will be fine tuning your ads for optimum results.

This internet marketing guide has given you some simple pointers to get Started. Follow the simple principles: web design and HTML that follows SEO guidelines, purchasing click through ads based on key words and phrases. A statistic database to measure the results of your ads.